Page:The Children's Plutarch, Romans.djvu/81

 make a broad platform, on which were set up high scaling-ladders. As this vast engine reached the walls at the water-side, the Romans would climb up the ladders and leap on to the battlements of the walls.

The King of Syracuse saw with alarm the preparation of this machine. He called for his wisest man.

“My friend,” he said, “you are the only man in Syracuse who can help me. Leave your drawings and your diagrams, your triangles, your cubes, your circles, your cones, your cylinders, your polygons, and all the rest. The city is in peril.”

So the wisest man in the city busied himself for some days in ordering workmen to set up engines for slinging stones, and other objects of large size. These were not the only machines the engineer made, as you will see.

The Roman ships were rowed toward the town walls.

The engines began to act. Masses of stone and lumps of lead were hurled at the galleys of the besiegers, smashing the rigging and crushing the fighting-men and sailors.

Some of the Roman ships managed to reach the walls. Then huge beams of wood were lifted by machines, and their ends fell with tremendous force upon the galleys, beating down masts and men in their descent.