The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose, page 159 by Various Authors
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ladders. They then formed a close military shell with their shields raised above their heads, and under that cover advanced to the ramparts. The Roman art of war was seen on both sides. The Vitellians rolled down massy stones, with which, having disjoined and shaken the shell, they inserted their long poles and spears; till at last, the whole frame and texture of the shields being dissolved, they strewed the ground with numbers of the crusht and mangled assailants....
Severe in the extreme was the conflict maintained by the third and the seventh legions. Antonius in person led on a select body of auxiliaries to the same quarter. The Vitellians were no longer able to sustain the shock of men all bent on victory, and seeing their darts fall on the military shell, and glide off without effect, at last they rolled down their battering-engine on the heads of the besiegers. For the moment, it dispersed and overwhelmed the party among which, it fell; but it also drew after it, in its fall, the battlements and upper parts of the rampart. An adjoining tower, at the same time, yielded to the effect of stones which struck it, and left a breach, at which the seventh legion, in the form of a wedge, endeavored to force their way, while the third hewed down the gate with axes and swords. The first man that entered, according to all historians, was Caius Volusius, a common soldier of the third legion. He gained the summit of the rampart, and, bearing down all resistance, in the view of all beckoned with his hand, and cried aloud that the camp was captured. The rest of the legion followed him with resistless fury, the Vitellians being panic-struck, and throwing themselves headlong from the works. The whole space between the camp and the walls of Cremona was filled with slain.[131]
And now a new form of difficulty was presented by the high walls of the city, and towers of stone, the gates secured by iron bars, and troops brandishing their arms; the inhabitants, a large and numerous body, all devoted to Vitellius; and