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After Dionysius had completed the mole1 by employing a large force of labourers, he advanced war engines of every kind against the walls and kept hammering the towers with his battering-rams, while with the catapults he kept down the fighters on the battlements; and he also advanced against the walls his wheeled towers, six stories high, which he had built to equal the height of the houses.

1 It is an interesting coincidence of history that the other use of a mole of such magnitude in ancient history against an island city was by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C. against Tyre, the mother-city of the Carthaginians. Alexander's mole was about half a mile long and reputed to be two hundred feet wide. For the story of the famous seven-month siege of Tyre see Book 17.40-46, Arrian Anab. 2.18-24, Curtius, 4.2-4.

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

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