THE DEFENCE OF PLATA. 207

take the city by assault. The sides of this mound
were enclosed by cross-beams of wood, so as to hold
its materials in place.

For seventy days and nights the whole army
worked busily at this sloping mound, and at the end
of this time it had reached nearly the height of the
wall. But the Plateans had not been idle while
their foes were thus at work. They raised the height
of their old wall at this point by an additional wall
of wood, backed up by brickwork, which they tore
down houses to obtain. In front of this they sus-
pended hides, so as to prevent fire-bearing arrows
from setting the wood on fire. Then they made a
hole through the lower part of the town wall, and
through it pulled the earth from the bottom of the
mound, so that the top fell in.

The besiegers now let down quantities of stiff
clay rolled up in wattled reeds, which could not be
thus pulled away. Yet their mound continued to
sink, in spite of the new materials they heaped on
top, and they could not tell why. In fact, the
Plateans had dug an underground passage from
within the town, and through this carried away the
foundations of the mound. And thus for more than
two months the besiegers built and the garrison de-
stroyed their works.

Not content with this, the Platewans built a new
portion of wall within the town, joining the old
wall on both sides of the mound, so that if the
besiegers should complete their mound and rush up
it in assault, they would find a new wall staring them
in the face, and all their labor lost.