The Persians rushed to extinguish the conflagration, and profiting by the momentary confusion the Emperor ordered an attack by the great battering-ram. This was a huge pine-stem, swung by chains from a pyramidal tower of beams, and pointed by a ram's head in metal. A hundred strong legionaries, hauling in rhythm on thick ropes made of ox-sinew, slowly heaved and balanced the enormous shaft. The first blow sounded like the rumbling of thunder. Earth shook and the walls resounded. The furious ram butted his metal head in a swift and tremendous succession of blows against the walls. There was a great crash; an entire corner of the wall had given way. The Persians, with despairing cries, fled in all directions; and Julian, the star of whose helmet glittered through clouds of dust, bright and terrible as the star of Mars, galloped into the conquered town. For two days the army rested under the fresh and shadowy groves on the other side of the city; the men regaling themselves with a kind of wine made of palm-juice, and amber-clear dates from Babylon. Then they resumed their march and entered a rocky plain. The heat was painful. Men and horses died in great numbers. At noon the air danced above the rocks in burning rays, and through the ashen-grey desert wound the silvery waves of Tigris, like a lazy serpent basking his coils in the sun. The Romans saw at length, beyond the Tigris, a lofty rock rising, rose-coloured, bare and jagged. This was the second fortress defending Ctesiphon, the southern capital of Persia. It was a place far more difficult to take than Perizaborh, and soared to the clouds like an eagle's nest. The sixteen towers and double enclosing walls of Maogamalki were built with the famous bricks of Babylon, sun-dried and mortared with bitumen, like all the ancient monuments of Assyria, which fear not the centuries. The attack commenced. Again the ungainly slings groaned, and the pulleys of _scorpions_ and _onagers_, or frames for flinging stones. Again huge flaming beams hissed like arrows from their engines. At the hour when even lizards go to sleep in fissures of the rock, the sun-rays fell vertically on the backs and heads of soldiers, stifling them like a crushing weight. The desperate legionaries, in defiance of their officers and of increased danger, snatched off their helmets and bloodied armour, preferring the chance of wounds to enduring that fearful heat. Above the brown towers and loopholes of Maogamalki, vomiting poisoned arrows, lances, stones, leaden bullets, and Persian fire-darts of choking sulphur, stretched the dazzling blue-grey of a dusty sky, blind and implacable as death. The heavens beat down the hatred of men. Besiegers and besieged, utterly exhausted, ceased fighting. And a silence of noon-day, more sullen than the blackest night, fell on both hosts.