Jewish soldiers, were undoubtedly the prototypes of those which the celebrated nations of Greece and Rome afterwards employed with so much success in their sieges.Þ The testudo, or tortoise, was a defensive invention, which received its name from covering and sheltering the soldiers from the weapons of their enemies, as a tortoise is covered by its shell. Ancient authors describe several kinds of it; but the one to which the sacred writer seems to allude, is the testudo militaris, used in the field of battle, but more frequently in surprising cities, before the inhabitants were apprised of their danger, and prepared for their defence, which served to protect the besiegers in their approach to the walls. When the testudo was formed, the soldiers drew up close to one another, and the hindermost ranks bowing themselves, placed their targets above their heads; the first rank stood erect, the rest stooped lower and lower by degrees, till the last rank kneeled upon the ground; the men in the front and on the sides holding their targets before their bodies, the rest covering the heads of those who were placed before them; so that the whole body resembled a pent-house or roof, covered with tiles, down which the enemies' missile weapons easily glided, without prejudice to the soldiers beneath. Under a covert of this kind, the prophet foretels that the armies of Babylon should advance to the attack of Tyre: "He shall slay with the sword thy daughters in the field; and he shall make a fort against thee, and cast a mount against thee, and lift up the buckler against thee;" advance to storm thy walls under the protection of the testudo; " and he shall set engines of war against thy walls, and with his axes he shall break down thy towers."d c Ibid. p. 93. b Potter's Gr. Antiq. vol. ii, p. 95. ... 4 Ezek. xxvi, 8, 9. Under the protection of their bucklers, the soldiers mounted upon the shoulders of one another till they reached the top of the wall; or they endeavoured singly to climb it, wherever they could find a hold, or a place less vigilantly guarded. The methods by which the besieged endeavoured to defend themselves and their families were various. When the enemy approached, they gave notice to their confederates to hasten their assistance. In the day, this was done by raising a great smoke; in the night by fires or lighted torches. If the flaming torch was intended to announce the arrival of friends, it was held still; but on the approach of an enemy, it was waved backwards and forwards, an apt emblem of the destructive tumults of war. In allusion to this practice, the prophet Jeremiah calls to the people of Benjamin and Judah; "Gather yourselves to flee out of the midst of Jerusalem, and blow the trumpet in Tekoah, and set up a sign of fire in Beth-haccerem ; for evil approaches out of the north, and great destruction." Sometimes, like the men of Gibeon and JabeshGilead, they sent messengers to inform their friends of their perilous condition, and entreat their assistance. They guarded the walls with soldiers, who, with stones and all sorts of missive weapons, annoyed the invaders, and repulsed their attack,. In some instances, the weaker sex vied with their fathers and husbands, in defending their walls; a memorable instance of which is recorded in the book of Judges, where the historian describes the fall of Abimelech by the hand of a woman. When Hezekiah was threatened with utter destruction by Sennacherib, " he took counsel with his princes and the mighty men, to • Potter's Gr. Antiq. vol. ii, p. 96. f Jer. vi, 1. Josh. x, 6. 1 Sam. xi, 4. stop the waters of the fountains, which were without the city --- Also he strengthened himself, and built up all the wall that was broken, and raised it up to the towers, and another wall without, and repaired Millo in the city of David, and made darts and shields in abundance."h Many other contrivances were used, as the posture of affairs required, or the genius of the besieged supplied them with methods of annoyance and defence; but as the sacred writers make few or no allusions to them, they do not come within the plan of this work. When a city was taken, all that were found in arms were put to the sword; the walls and buildings were demolished, and the rest of the inhabitants were sold into slavery. If the defence had been long and vigorous, if the besiegers had suffered much, or if the general was of a cruel or ungenerous disposition, men, women, and children, were involved in one promiscuous destruction. But so cruel a fate was reserved only for some particular places; many cities taken by siege, were, after the tumult of battle, received into favour by the conqueror, who required only some tributary acknowledgment. The lot of populous No was very severe. This ancient and celebrated city," that was situate among the rivers, that had the waters round about it, whose rampart was the sea, and her wall was from the sea," had probably made a long and obstinate resistance: "Yet was she carried away, she went into captivity; her young children also were dashed in pieces at the top of all the streets; and they cast lots for her honourable men; and all her great men were bound in chains." No less complete was the pre dicted destruction of Tyre, which has long since been realized in every particular; " And they shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break down her towers. I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock. It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord God; and it shall become a spoil to the nations. And her daughters which are in the field shall be slain by the sword; and they shall know that I am the Lord." Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, has been in like manner swept away from the face of the earth, by the fierce anger of Jehovah; the prediction has been completely fulfilled; "Every one that is found shall be thrust through; and every one that is joined unto them shall fall by the sword. Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished." The prediction of Jerusalem's fall may finish this fearful picture of desolation: "For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation."" When the Greeks demolished a city, it was their custom to pronounce direful curses against those who should attempt to rebuild it. This custom seems to have been of great antiquity, and derived from the eastern nations ; for Joshua, the renowned successor of Moses, pronounced a solemn malediction against the person who should rebuild Jericho; which received its accomplishment in Hiel * Ezek. xxvi, 3. 1 1 Isa. xiii, 15. m Luke xix, 43. the Bethelite, many ages after, in the reign of Ahab. "In his days did Hiel the Bethelite build Jericho: he laid the foundation thereof in Abiram, his first-born, and set up the gates thereof in his youngest son Segub, according to the word of the Lord, which he spake by Joshua the son of Nun." The captured city was, after being razed to the foundations, not unfrequently sowed with salt, and marked with the plough, in token of perpetual desolation. Experience had taught the ancients, that the soil which abounds with salt is uniformly barren and desolate. The dreary solitudes, encrusted with salt, which in Syria so frequently meet the traveller's eye, and particularly that extensive desert which stretches between Aleppo and Bassorah near the Persian gulf, probably suggested to the oriental conqueror, the ancient custom of sowing with salt a vanquished city, which his ungenerous revenge had devoted to never-ending desolation. A memorable instance of this practice occurs in the history of Abimelech, who took the city of Shechem, and after putting the wretched inhabitants to the sword, levelled it with the ground, and sowed it with salt. And in modern times, the exasperated emperor Frederic Barbarossa, burnt, razed, sowed with salt, and ploughed the city of Milan. In allusion to the last of these customs, it was foretold by the prophet Micah: "Zion shall be ploughed like a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of a forest." The Jewish writers allow that this prophecy received its fulfilment in the utter destruction of the second temple by Titus, when • 1 Kings xvi, 34. Potter's Gr. Antiq. vol. ii, p. 97. 4 Jer. xxvi, 18. |