undermined the mound; and thus, for a long time unperceived, prevented it from gaining height. Still, however, fearing that the efforts of their scanty numbers would be overborne by the multitude of hands which the besiegers could employ, they had recourse to another device. Within their town-wall they built, in a semilunar form, a second wall, connected with the first at the extremities. These extended, on either side, beyond the mound; so that should the enemy possess themselves of the outer wall, their work would be to be renewed in a far less favorable situation. … A ram, advanced upon the Peloponnesian mound, battered the superstructure on the Platæan rampart, and shook it violently; to the great alarm of the garrison, but with little farther effect. {1583} Other machines of the same kind were employed against different parts of the wall itself, but to yet less purpose. … No means however were neglected by the besiegers that either approved practice suggested, or their ingenuity could devise, to promote their purpose; yet, after much of the summer consumed, they found every effort of their numerous forces so completely baffled by the vigilance, activity, and resolution of the little garrison, that they began to despair of succeeding by assault. Before however they would recur to the tedious method of blockade, they determined to try one more experiment, for which their numbers, and the neighboring woods of Cithæron, gave them more than ordinary facility. Preparing a very great quantity of faggots, they filled with them the town-ditch in the parts adjoining to their mound, and disposed piles in other parts around the place, wherever ground or any other circumstance gave most advantage. On the faggots they put sulphur and pitch, and then set all on fire. The conflagration was such as was never before known, says Thucydides, to have been prepared and made by the hands or men. … But fortunately for the garrison, a heavy rain, brought on by a thunderstorm without wind, extinguished the fire, and relieved them from an attack far more formidable than any they had before experienced. This attempt failing, the Peloponnesians determined immediately to reduce the siege to a blockade. … To the palisade, which already surrounded the town, a contravallation was added; with a double ditch, one without, and one within. A sufficient body of troops being then appointed to the guard of these works, the Bœotians undertaking one half, the other was allotted to detachments drafted from the troops of every state of the confederacy, and, a little after the middle of September, the rest of the army was dismissed for the winter." _W. Mitford, History of Greece, chapter 15, section 1 (volume 2)._