Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 6.djvu/535

 IN MILITARY OPERATIONS. '3(i5 sage of Livy also agrees with that already produced in showing what quantities of these instruments were taken on a mihtary expedition in connexion with the engineering department. To tlie same eiiect is the inquiry of the general addressed to his soldiers in Tacitus (Hist. iii. 20.), " Num secures, dolabras, et c^etera expugnandis urbibus securn attulissent 1 '^ i. c. '' Whether they had brought with them hatchets, chisels, and the other instruments necessary for taking cities 1 " There is another passage of Tacitus {Ann. III., 46), which is very instructive on account of the extraordinary manner, in which it represents the dolabr?e to have been employed. It is, I believe, the only known case of the use of this imple- ment in an attack upon persons. In Gaul, under the Emperor Tiberius, the iEdui had revolted, and were led on by Julius Sacrovir, who occupied with his troops Augustodunum, now Autun, the principal city of the iEdui. To increase the number of his forces, he availed himself of the assistance of those slaves, who were under training as gladiators, and who wore a complete suit of iron-plate armour. The javelins and swords of the Romans being ineffectual against this armour, they laid hold of their hatchets and chisels, as if they w^ere breaking through a wall. With these they attacked the gladiators, cutting in pieces both the coverings and the covered. Some of them made use of thrusting-poles or forks, with which they threw down the inert mass of the enemy, and the gladiators, without attempting to rise from the ground, were left as if they were dead. " Pauluni morcC attulere ferrati, restantibus laminis adversum pila et gladios: sed miles correptis securibus et dolabris, ut si murum perrum- peret, cjedere tegmina et corpora : quidam trudibus aut furcis inertem molem prosternere ; jacentesque, nullo ad resurgendum nisu, quasi exanimes linquebantur." In this passage, we have another proof that chisels and hatchets were among the usual accoutrements of the Roman army, and that they used them for breaking through w^alls.^ Juvenal mentions the use of the dolabra in making - lu the collection of bronze celts annexed wood-cut (size of the original) belonging to the Society of Anti((uarics di-awn jtartly from memory. It is hol- of Picardy, preserved at Amiens, and low, in shape nearly cyliudi'ical, and like also in that belonging to M. Boucher de a bottle. The upper part exactly re- Perthes, at Abbeville, I observed .an im- senibles the celts of Mr. Du Noyer's 5th jilcment, which is represented in the class, and is evidently intended to fasten