[40]
As soon as Athens was taken Sulla, impatient at the long siege of the Piræus, brought up rams, and projectiles of all kinds, and a large force of men, who battered the walls under the shelter of tortoises, and numerous cohorts who hurled javelins and shot arrows in vast numbers at the defenders on the walls in order to drive them back. He knocked down a part of the newly built lunette, which was still moist and weak. Archelaus had anticipated this from the first and had built several others like it inside, so that
Sulla came upon one wall after another, and found his task endless. But he pushed on with tireless energy, he relieved his men often, he was ubiquitous among them, urging them on and showing them that their entire hope of reward for their labors depended on accomplishing this small remainder. The soldiers, too, believing that this would in fact be the end of their toils, and spurred to their work by the love of glory and the thought that it would be a splendid achievement to conquer such walls as these, pressed forward vigorously. Finally, Archelaus was dumbfounded by their senseless and mad persistence, and abandoned the walls to them and betook himself to that part of the Piræus which was most strongly fortified and enclosed on all sides by the sea. As Sulla had no ships he could not attack it.
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Appian. The Foreign Wars. Horace White. New York. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 1899.
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