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Chap. 7.]
extinguish fires in cities in times of peace, it is to be regretted tbat neitherApollodorus nor Yitruvius bas described them: perhaps they were toocommon to have been thought worthy of particular notice. In the designand execution of their essential parts, they were probably equal to our bestengines. Some persons may doubt this, but it should be remembered thatthe nature of ancient wars naturally led to the best construction of all mi-litary machinery; and of defensive apparatus, engines to extinguish firecould not have been the least important, when that element was univer-sally employed. The contests of the ancients were often those of mecha-nical skill rather than of fighting—conflicts of talent in engineering thanin generaiship ; hence the ingenuity displayed in their machinery and thewonders wrought by it. Archimedes , by superior machines, protectedSyracuse for eight months against all the efforts of the legions of Marcellusand the Roman engineers. The successes of Demetrius and Hamiibalwere often due to the' novelty of their engines : the Carthagenian machin-ists were indeed proverbially skilful, so much so, that in Rome itself anycurious piece of mechanism was, by way of eminence, named pwnic. An-cient armies were also often employed in obtaining, raising and cutting offwater ; the hydraulic engines of Ganymede nearly ruined Cassar and hisarmy in Alexandria, Cyrus took Babylon by diverting the course of theEuphrates , &c. The frequent use of hydraulic engines in war either toextinguish fires or for other purposes, would naturally lead to skill in mak-ing as well as in using them'.
•W'--. Sr-. ‘llluwiMi mmmmüHDiiii iiii'mu iiniimHnn
.1
No. 141. Egyptian Fire-Engine of the 2d Century beforo Christ, from Heron’s Spiritalia.
That the idea of employing forcing pumps as fire-engines was not newm the time of Apollodorus or Vitruvius , we have conclusive evidence.Among the small nurnber of ancient writings that escaped destruction inthose dark and turbulent ages that intervened between the decline of theRoman power and the introduction of printing into Europe , was a Greekmanuscript, containing an account of variöus devices for the application ofv^ater, and among them an engine for eXtinguishing fires. This smallwork was illustrated with figures, like the original work of Vitruvius .Several Latin translations were made and published in the 16th and 17th
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