Page:Frontinus - The stratagems, and, the aqueducts of Rome (Bennet et al 1925).djvu/305

 STRATAGEMS, III. xvii. 1-5

purposely placed a scanty number of defenders on the walls. In contempt of their small numbers, Hasdrubal incautiously approached the walls, where- upon they made a sortie and slew him.'^

When the Ligurians with their entire force made a surprise attack on the camp of Aemilius Paulus, the latter feigned fear and for a long time kept his troops in camp. Then, when the enemy were exhausted, making a sortie by the four gates, he defeated the Ligurians and made them prisoners. ^

Livius, commander of the Romans, when holding the citadel of the Tarentines, sent envoys to Has- drubal, requesting the privilege of withdrawing undisturbed. When by this feint he had thrown the enemy off their guard, he made a sortie and cut them to pieces.^

Gnaeus Pompey, when besieged near Dyrrhachium, not only released his own men from blockade, but also made a sally at an opportune time and place ; for just as Caesar was making a fierce assault on a fortified position surrounded by a double line of works, Pompey, by this sortie, so enveloped him with a cordon of troops that Caesar incurred no slight peril and loss, caught, as he was, between those whom he was besieging and those who had surrounded him from the outside."*

Flavins Fimbria, when fighting in Asia near the river Rhvndacus against the son of Mithridates, constructed two lines of works on his flanks and a ditch in front, and kept his soldiers quietly within their entrenchments, until the cavalry of the enemy passed within the confined portions of his fortifica- tions. Then, making a sortie, he slew six thousand of them.^

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