This huge "thing" is the design of Pop, the equipment director of Li Bida, after watching the battle in person at the front of the blockade line for several days. Because the remnants of the Albizi barbarian warriors, in the short battle between the earthen ramparts and the walls of the acropolis, began to exert their might. Many soldiers complained that while the T-shaped earthen ramparts and ditches served as a means of cover and isolation, the massella projectiles in the Acropolis were also terrifying, and their powerful ballistae could shoot twelve-foot-long wooden poles with iron over several fences and fences, destroying our walls and equipment. In addition, the Albisians in the city were able to climb the earthen ramparts with ease, forcing our soldiers to fight with their white blades, and the damage was not small.

"The warriors needed stronger protection, and taller towers that could shoot stones and javelins into the city, rather than makeshift towers threatened by the city's fire." This was Pop's report to Lypida, and the commander-in-chief of the siege immediately appropriated a huge sum of one hundred talents from the treasury and handed it to Pop and the sapper detachment, asking him to use the money to mobilize the whole of Old Gaul and Liguria with manpower, timber, masonry, and iron, and to boldly do what the soldiers demanded.

Originally, Pop made a slight modification of the earthen ramparts, and on the periphery of the outer fifteen Roman feet, a large wooden canopy of sixty Roman feet long was erected and supported diagonally, reinforced with two intersecting beams on the inside, and wrapped in animal skins on the outside, so as to block the weapons fired from the city. As a result, the soldiers and the men who had been sent from the conscription built a low-brick makeshift fortress with four walls and a passage through the T-shaped ramparts, and the walls were five Roman feet thick, and each side was thirty Roman feet long.

The next day, when the Albysis came to attack. This brick and stone structure played a big role in the torches thrown by the Albyssi. It doesn't hurt it in the slightest. Then a hundred-man infantry stationed inside, with their archers, easily repelled the attacking barbarians, and drove them back, killing dozens of them.

Then the soldiers became excited and demanded that Pop build something taller and bigger, and they went to work, first by setting up the lifting equipment inside, and then by hiding the wooden floors and grilles behind the brick walls. In order to prevent it from being set on fire by the enemy, the soldiers all built a higher wall on the floor under the cover of their shields, and made a roof covering, and after setting up the cross-beams to reinforce it, they were raised by a crane, and the grating of the cover was made slightly outward, and reinforced with stakes and iron nails on the wall, and the protruding grate of course had a deep meaning - it played the role of a hook, on which the soldiers faced the enemy on three sides. They were all hung with huge shoji on the ship's cables, and they were mixed with asbestos to keep out the flames. This soft thing can not only prevent the piercing of enemy arrows and javelins, but also block the damage of throwing torches. In addition, the soldiers also plastered all the top floors with plaster for fire prevention.

When the second floor of the brick tower was completed, the crane raised the roof cover and shoji to the height of the third floor, and the soldiers continued to build the third layer of brick tower with masonry under its cover.

In this way, the semi-permanent siege tower, which the Acropolis soldiers called "the Aemilius Behemoth", was finally built six stories high into the sky, and while it was being built, the Massellans continued to launch raids to destroy it, but to no avail, but instead their own dead bodies covered the feet of the giant beast. And so on, and finally at the two siege attack points, there were three such "giant siege towers", which exceeded the height of the Acropolis of Massalia, and then Li Pida's soldiers cut holes and gouged holes in each layer above, and put ballistas, belly bows, scorpion crossbows, and stick throwers on them, and then shot stone bullets, fire javelins, and arrows like meteor showers in all directions towards the acropolis!

"Hit the on-duty cannon every day!" It's their password.

In a matter of days, the towers of the Acropolis were destroyed or half-destroyed, the dead and wounded filled the streets of the ditches, and Triari hid like a shrunken turtle in his fortified dwellings, never again talking about himself as a "third party" in the war. Then, the soldiers of Li Bida began to make persistent efforts, and after confirming that none of the enemy's fortifications of the acropolis could threaten them, they began to build a long canopy that stretched to the foot of the city wall, first with two beams of the same length on the ground, four Roman feet apart from each other, and then used iron nails to erect five Roman feet high pillars on it, and then to lay diagonally crossed rafters between them, and then on the rafters, with two Roman feet thick wood spliced with iron nails to form the upper cover, and then imitate the building gable on the cover. The triangular roof is made of masonry and wooden beams, which slopes sharply on both sides, and is covered with tiles and plaster, and stuffed with asbestos in the middle.

Under the canopy, the soldiers stuffed the rolling log, which was originally used on ships, and now used to move the canopy, stretching them under the city wall one by one, so that the canopy was like a giant beast stretching out countless tentacles, so that the defenders were terrified, they tried their best to pry up the huge stone with a lever, and smashed it straight down, but the cross-load-bearing wooden beams made the canopy extremely strong, and the stone encountered the triangular roof and could not form an impact at all, and they all fell down. Later, the Massellans used torches coated with pine resin, lit them and threw them downwards in an attempt to burn the tent, but the torches were thrown on the tent and soon rolled down, and some of the lucky ones stuck to it were quickly forked away by the soldiers inside with forks.

In the end, a few clever citizens, although hungry, still carried out the torches with thick iron nails and let them penetrate the roof of the tent, so that they could be effectively attached and burned.

But this construction was too late, and the "Emilian Behemoth" rained bullets, and the defenders were soon left with nowhere to stay at the head of the city, and were completely driven away—Li Pida's subordinates in the shelter began to use crowbars and torches to destroy the foundation stones of the wall, and in the loud noise and smoke, several sections of the wall of Massella collapsed, and the rest began to tilt and collapse.

After nightfall, Triali and his army surrounded the mansion where Cato the Younger was located, shouting loudly for Cato the Younger to surrender to the besieging army on behalf of the city.

Then, the Presbyterian Church of Marcellia sent the priests to inform Cato with the same demand: the city must not be completely destroyed, and we no longer have any intention of getting involved in the internal strife of the Republic, so we must surrender.

"Why do the soldiers, as well as the citizens, rush to consult me for advice, and ignore me in peacetime? Is it just because I'm a good person? Peace talks, of course, are no problem, and this in itself is the right of the citizens of Massella themselves. In the courtyard, little Cato, who was reading, replied with ease when he heard the news. (To be continued......)