BOOK ONE,

Places are fortified by Nature, by Art, or by both.

both, which is considered the best and most secure. Nature fortifies places by giving them an advantageous position on some high and rugged terrain, or by spreading around them the sea, some marshes, or some river. Art digs ditches and builds walls. Regarding the advantages of Nature, one need only know how to choose them well. In a flat countryside, the industry of the one who wishes to hold it is necessary: and one has not failed to see in former times, in fields open on all sides, cities that art, despite the location, had rendered impregnable. (a)

Nature employs Land as well as Sea for the fortification of places. A beautiful example in Cilicia.

Cilicia, which is a region famous in Asia Minor, is enclosed almost on all sides by a rugged and difficult mountain, which rises from the seashore, curves in a semi-circle, and returns to carry its other point some distance from where it had begun. The ridge of this semicircular mountain is, as it were, carved in three places, and leaves three openings, whose passage is so steep and so narrow that hardly three armed men can pass abreast. Alexander, having considered attentively the situation of this passage, said (according to the report of Q. Curtius) that he had never had a greater subject to recognize the good fortune that accompanied him: for he and his army could have been crushed by the fall of the rocks, if there had been even a few people to roll them upon them. (b)

In Switzerland.

The Swiss, that warlike people of Germany, are not so much separated from those powerful neighbors who surround them by the glory of their Nation and by the proofs of their valor, which their enemies have often tested, as by the height and the ruggedness of the mountains they inhabit.

Example of rocks and mountains that nature has fortified.

We also see various other lesser places, which Nature seems to have fortified for the relief of the wretched, and for the refuge of those who are pressed by their enemies.

The Rock of Aornos.

When Alexander was ravaging the Region of the Mazagares with fire and sword, this poor people found a secure asylum against the terrors of war in the Rock of Aornos; which they seized, carrying away only their weapons from their abandoned cities, and which Alexander, as well as Hercules, attacked uselessly. (c)

Machaerus, mountain of Judea.

I must not forget here the castle of Machaerus, of which Josephus speaks, and which was formerly, after Jerusalem, the second fortress of Judea, just as (d) Pliny recounts. (e) Josephus takes pains to describe it very appropriately to our subject. Bassus, having subsequently gathered all his forces, resolved to attack Machaerus with the Tenth Legion: for it seemed to him very necessary to raze this castle, which was strong enough to solicit many to some revolt. In effect, the nature of the place promised a safe retreat to those who withdrew there, and it could only instill fear in anyone who undertook to attack it. A high rock serves as its wall, and Nature, as if taking pleasure in making it inaccessible, has dug all around it ditches whose depth the eye cannot measure, and which it would be impossible to fill: for the valley that cuts on the Eastern side extends 60 stadia original: "LX stades" to the edge of the Dead Sea original: "lac Asphaltite", and on this point one sees the castle of Machaerus. To the North and the South, there is a similar valley of passage just as difficult. That on the Western side is no less than one hundred cubits deep,