HEGETOR'S TORTOISE
[Illustration: HEGETOR'S RAM AND TORTOISE
1. From a MS. of the sixteenth century (Wescher's Poliorcétique des
Grecs).
2. From a model made by A. A. Howard.]
1. There is also another kind of tortoise, which has all the other
details as described above except the rafters, but it has round it a
parapet and battlements of boards, and eaves sloping downwards, and
is covered with boards and hides firmly fastened in place. Above this
let clay kneaded with hair be spread to such a thickness that fire
cannot injure the machine. These machines can, if need be, have eight
wheels, should it be necessary to modify them with reference to the
nature of the ground. Tortoises, however, which are intended for
excavating, termed in Greek [Greek: oryktides], have all the other
details as described above, but their fronts are constructed like the
angles of triangles, in order that when missiles are shot against them
from a wall, they may receive the blows not squarely in front, but
glancing from the sides, and those excavating within may be protected
without danger.
2. It does not seem to me out of place to set forth the principles on
which Hegetor of Byzantium constructed a tortoise. The length of its
base was sixty-three feet, the breadth forty-two. The corner posts, four
in number, which were set upon this framework, were made of two timbers
each, and were thirty-six feet high, a foot and a quarter thick, and a
foot and a half broad. The base had eight wheels by means of which it
was moved about. The height of these wheels was six and three quarters
feet, their thickness three feet. Thus constructed of three pieces of
wood, united by alternate opposite dovetails and bound together by
cold-drawn iron plates, they revolved in the trees or amaxopodes.
3. Likewise, on the plane of the crossbeams above the base, were erected
posts eighteen feet high, three quarters of a foot broad, two thirds of
a foot thick, and a foot and three quarters apart; above these, framed
beams, a foot broad and three quarters of a foot thick, held the whole
structure together; above this the rafters were raised, with an
elevation of twelve feet; a beam set above the rafters united their
joinings. They also had bridgings fastened transversely, and a flooring
laid on them protected the parts beneath.
4. It had, moreover, a middle flooring on girts, where scorpiones and
catapults were placed. There were set up, also, two framed uprights
forty-five feet long, a foot and a half in thickness, and three quarters
of a foot in breadth, joined at the tops by a mortised crossbeam and by
another, halfway up, mortised into the two shafts and tied in place by
iron plates. Above this was set, between the shafts and the crossbeams,
a block pierced on either side by sockets, and firmly fastened in place
with clamps. In this block were two axles, turned on a lathe, and ropes
fastened from them held the ram.
5. Over the head of these (ropes) which held the ram, was placed a
parapet fitted out like a small tower, so that, without danger, two
soldiers, standing in safety, could look out and report what the enemy
were attempting. The entire ram had a length of one hundred and eighty
feet, a breadth at the base of a foot and a quarter, and a thickness of
a foot, tapering at the head to a breadth of a foot and a thickness of
three quarters of a foot.
6. This ram, moreover, had a beak of hard iron such as ships of war
usually have, and from the beak iron plates, four in number, about
fifteen feet long, were fastened to the wood. From the head to the very
heel of the beam were stretched cables, three in number and eight digits
thick, fastened just as in a ship from stem to stern continuously, and
these cables were bound with cross girdles a foot and a quarter apart.
Over these the whole ram was wrapped with rawhide. The ends of the ropes
from which the ram hung were made of fourfold chains of iron, and these
chains were themselves wrapped in rawhide.
7. Likewise, the projecting end of the ram had a box framed and
constructed of boards, in which was stretched a net made of rather large
ropes, over the rough surfaces of which one easily reached the wall
without the feet slipping. And this machine moved in six directions,
forward (and backward), also to the right or left, and likewise it was
elevated by extending it upwards and depressed by inclining it
downwards. The machine could be elevated to a height sufficient to throw
down a wall of about one hundred feet, and likewise in its thrust it
covered a space from right to left of not less than one hundred feet.
One hundred men controlled it, though it had a weight of four thousand
talents, which is four hundred and eighty thousand pounds.