Aeneid.) It was once a gate in the primitive city of Romulus and Numa, (Nardini, p.

13, 256, 329.) Virgil has described the ancient rite like a poet and an antiquarian.] Eighteen days were employed by the besiegers, to provide all the instruments of attack which antiquity had invented.
Fascines were prepared to fill the ditches, scaling-ladders to ascend the walls.

The largest trees of the forest supplied the timbers of four battering-rams: their heads were armed with iron; they were suspended by ropes, and each of them was worked by the labor of fifty men.

The lofty wooden turrets moved on wheels or rollers, and formed a spacious platform of the level of the rampart.

On the morning of the nineteenth day, a general attack was made from the Praenestine gate to the Vatican: seven Gothic columns, with their military engines, advanced to the assault; and the Romans, who lined the ramparts, listened with doubt and anxiety to the cheerful assurances of their commander.