In less than an hour, they lowered a filled woolsack off the rampart in front of the siege tower. Men with shields lifted them high to protect the ones with the rope. The ram struck, a foot or two below where they had put the sack. Trying again, they let it drop, only to go too far and have the ram’s head slam into the wall above it.

‘Come on, you can do better than that,’ Domitius muttered. ‘That’s it!’ At the third attempt the ram gave a dull thump as it drove into the cushion of the sack. ‘What do you say to that, Caecilius?’ he added in Latin. Simon gave him an odd look.

They stopped the fourth charge of the ram, then the Romans shifted their aim and struck the wall just to the right of the sack.

‘How far can they move it?’ Athenodorus had come up beside him.

‘Hard to be precise,’ Domitius admitted. ‘A few feet either side at least. Less up and down, but it will be designed so that they can batter a wide area without moving the whole tower.’

‘More sacks, then,’ Athenodorus decided, as the men managed to catch the edge of the ram and take some of the force from the blow. ‘Oh!’ The mild exclamation came when a stone from a large ballista shattered the shields held above the men at the rope, flinging up fragments of wood and leather and limbs. Unsupported, the sack slipped down to the bottom of the wall. ‘That’s a shame.’

Domitius thought that it was more luck. Until they added platforms large enough for the bigger engines on either side of the ramp, anything that size was shooting up at its steepest angle and with its highest force, which rarely made for accuracy.

‘Can we smash that tower?’ Athenodorus asked him. ‘Or burn it?’

‘Perhaps, perhaps not. Always hard to know until you try. Try to hit the same spots again and again with stone throwers, or sally out with torches and set light to it.’ Domitius watched as a bolt shooter sent a missile trailing black smoke to slam into the side of the tower. It smouldered for a while, but the flames from the tallow tied behind the head eventually faded without spreading onto the stretched hide. ‘Begging your pardon, my lord, but do you want me to take a look at the other ramp. They were making quick progress with that, last time I was over that side.’

‘No. This is the one that matters. Unless you have any more inspirations, then you had better get back to the workshop. There is plenty to keep you busy, I understand?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Run along then.’

Simon and the guards took him away, weaving a different route through the streets this time, that seemed even more unnecessary than their earlier detour. They passed a street where a dozen or more buildings had burned out, and had to take care stepping past folk living on the street itself, under makeshift roofs supported by the shells of the houses. Faces were drawn, eyes worried, and a few of the children had the bloated bellies that mocked their hunger. His own rations had got steadily worse in the last days, and turning a corner they saw larger halls, no doubt once warehouses, also destroyed by fire.