Page:Frontinus - The stratagems, and, the aqueducts of Rome (Bennet et al 1925).djvu/257

 STRATAGEMS, III. ii. 5-9

habitants, and also to a grove outside the walls. Then, when the townspeople poured out to fight the conflagration, Cinion captured the city, since it was left without defenders.^

Alcibiades, the Athenian commander, while be- sieging the strongly fortified city of the Agrigentines, requested a conference of the citizens, and, as though discussing matters of common concern, addressed tliem at length in the theatre, where according to the custom of the Greeks it was usual to afford a place for consultation. Then, while he held the crowd on the pretence of deliberation, the Athenians, whom he had previously prepared for this move, captured the city, thus left unguarded.^

When Epaminondas, the Theban, was campaigning in Arcadia, and on a certain holiday the women of the enemy strolled in large numbers outside the walls, he sent among them a number of his own troops dressed in women's attire. In consequence of this disguise, the men were admitted towards niglitfall to the town, whereupon they seized it and threw it open to their companions.^

Aristippus, the Spartan, on a holiday of the Tegeans, when the whole population had gone out of the city to celebrate the rites of Minerva, sent to Tegea a number of mules laden with grain-bags filled with chaff. The mules were di'iven by soldiers disguised as traders, who, escaping notice, threw open the gates of the town to their comrades.

When Antiochus was besieging the fortified town of Suenda in Cappadocia, he intercepted some beasts of burden which had gone out to procure grain. Then, killing their attendants, he dressed his own soldiers in their clothes and sent them in as though bringing

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