Page:Frontinus - The stratagems, and, the aqueducts of Rome (Bennet et al 1925).djvu/71

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Stratagems, I. iii. 4–10

ing all risks of battle, and abandoning even the defence of their territory, retired within the walls of their city and succeeded in causing Philip to withdraw, since he could not endure the delay of a siege.[1]

Hasdrubal, the son of Gisco, in the Second Punic War, distributed his vanquished army among the cities of Spain when Publius Scipio pressed hard upon him. As a result, Scipio, in order not to scatter his forces by laying siege to several towns, withdrew his army into winter quarters.[2]

Themistocles, when Xerxes was approaching, thinking the strength of the Athenians unequal to a land battle, to the defence of their territory, or to the support of a siege, advised them to remove their wives and children to Troezen and other towns, to abandon the city, and to transfer the scene of the war to the water.[3]

Pericles did the same thing in the same state, in the war with the Spartans.[4]

While Hannibal was lingering in Italy, Scipio sent an army into Africa, and so forced the Carthaginians to recall Hannibal. In this way he transferred the war from his own country to that of the enemy.[5]

When the Spartans had fortified Decelea, a stronghold of the Athenians, and were making frequent raids from there, the Athenians sent a fleet to harass the Peloponnesus, and thus secured the recall of the army of Spartans stationed at Decelea.[6]

When the Germans, in accordance with their usual custom, kept emerging from woodland-pastures and unsuspected hiding-places to attack our men, and then finding a safe refuge in the depths of the

  1. 339 B.C. Cf. Justin. ix. 1.
  2. 207 B.C. Cf. Livy xxviii. 2-3.
  3. 480 B.C. Cf. Herod. viii. 41.
  4. 431 B.C. Cf. Thuc. i. 143.
  5. 204 B.C. Cf. Appian Hann. 55; Livy xxviii. 40 ff.
  6. 413 B.C. Cf. Thuc. vii. 18.
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