Kitap 10
16.10
10. But at this time Trypho, the Alexandrine architect, was there. He planned a number of countermines inside the wall, and extending them outside the wall beyond the range of arrows, hung up in all of them brazen vessels. The brazen vessels hanging in one of these mines, which was in front of a mine of the enemy, began to ring from the strokes of their iron tools. So from this it was ascertained where the enemy, pushing their mines, thought to enter. The line being thus found out, he prepared kettles of hot water, pitch, human excrement, and sand heated to a glow. Then, at night, he pierced a number of holes, and pouring the mixture suddenly through them, killed all the enemy who were engaged in this work.
16.11
11. In the same manner, when Marseilles was being besieged, and they were pushing forward more than thirty mines, the people of Marseilles, distrusting the entire moat in front of their wall, lowered it by digging it deeper. Thus all the mines found their outlet in the moat. In places where the moat could not be dug they constructed, within the walls, a basin of enormous length and breadth, like a fish pond, in front of the place where the mines were being pushed, and filled it from wells and from the port. And so, when the passages of the mine were suddenly opened, the immense mass of water let in undermined the supports, and all who were within were overpowered by the mass of water and the caving in of the mine.
