We do not propose to enter into detail concerning the arrangement and discipline, tactics and strategy, of the Greek armies. A few words must be said about Greek sieges. Schliemann’s excavations at Mycenae and Tiryns have proved to us the magnificence of some ancient fortifications. It is, therefore, natural that the siege of a strongly-fortified place was a difficult matter for a Greek army, since effective besieging machines were only very gradually invented. For centuries they contented themselves with simply surrounding a city and trying to force it by hunger; an even more favourite device was trickery or treachery; they were neither able to storm a town nor make breaches in the wall. The first machine for storming made use of by the Greeks was the ram, an invention of the Carthaginians, but this, too, was ineffectual against very strong walls. They, therefore, very often resorted to the device of undermining the walls in order to make them fall; sometimes they raised the ground for attack by constructing a mound, or made movable towers in order to enable them to fight from the same height as the garrison. There were various devices, too, for setting the town, or at any rate its fortifications, on fire; and if the local conditions permitted it, they sometimes tried to reduce the besieged to extremities by cutting off their drinking water, or producing an artificial flood. This primitive kind of siege warfare only gave way to a more rational method during the Macedonian wars; it was in particular the merit of King Philip, instead of enclosing a city, to concentrate the attack on one point in the wall, in which breaches were made. The discovery of heavy artillery, the perfection of breaching implements, movable batteries, protective apparatus, and revolving turrets, did not take place till the Alexandrine age. [Illustration: FIG. 190.]