Plate 10: Civilis using Movable Wooden Bridges to Attack the Fortress by Antonio Tempesta & Otto van Veen 1611

"These peoples are always at first too impetuous and easily emboldened by success; but now in their greed for booty they were ready to brave reverses as well, venturing even to use siege machines also, which they are not accustomed to employ. They had no skill in these themselves: deserters and captives taught them how to build of timber a kind of bridge, to put wheels under the structure, and then to push it forward, so that some standing on the top might fight as from a mound and others concealed within might undermine the walls; but stones shot from ballistae broke up the rude structure, and when they began to prepare screens and sheds, the Romans shot blazing darts at these with cross-bows, and threatened the assailants also with fire, until the barbarians, despairing of success by force, changed to a policy of delay, being well aware that the camp had provisions for only a few days and that it contained a great crowd of non-combatants; at the same time they counted on treachery as a result of want, and on the uncertain faith of the slaves and the chances of war."

-Tacitus, The Histories: Book 4, Chapter 23

Plate 10: Civilis using Movable Wooden Bridges to Attack the Fortress by Antonio Tempesta & Otto van Veen 1611, from The War of the Romans Against the Batavians (Romanorvm et Batavorvm societas). 6 5/16 × 8 1/8 in. (16 × 20.6 cm). Current location: MET Museum. Antonio Tempesta in collaboration with Otto van Veen published in 1612 in Antwerp a series of thirty-six etchings on the Batavians and the Romans in a book entitled Batavorum cum Romanis bellum.

Source:

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/401512


Quote:

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Tacitus/Histories/4A*.html