[*] 235.15. erat: with necesse; its subj. is the infinitives.—materiari: i.e. to get timber; lignari would mean to get firewood.
[*] 235.16.
copiis: Caesar had about 50,000 men.
[*] 235.20.
quo,
in order that.
[*] 235.21.
truncis arborum, etc.: trunks of trees or very stiff boughs were cut down; then the boughs were trimmed and sharpened at the ends, and then planted in five rows in trenches each five feet deep （
quinos pedes）, and perhaps one and a half feet wide.
[*] 235.24.
huc … eminebant,
those boughs being sunk in these （
huc, i.e. the trenches）
and being securely fastened at the bottom so that they could not be torn up, projected from the ground only with their branches.
[*] 235.25.
quini … ordines: these five-rows of chevaux-de-frise, intertwined so as to be continuous, covered a space perhaps twenty-five feet wide, so that, even with the help of a pole, an enemy could not easily leap over them.
[*] 235.26.
quo qui intraverant,
whoever entered within them; protasis of a past general condition.
[*] 235.27.
cippos: i.e. boundary-stones, so called jestingly by the troops; see Fig.
103.
[*] 235.29.
scrobes,
little pits, with sloping sides, three feet deep, dug in eight rows, arranged, as we should say, in diamond-pattern, or as trees were planted in an orchard （
in quincuncem）, so that each should be equally distant from the six adjacent. A stout, sharp stake was set in each, packed with a foot depth of earth, its point projecting four inches, the pit being then loosely filled with twigs and brush. This funnel-shaped trap for man or beast the soldiers called a "lily-cup" （
lilium）; see Fig. 131.
 |
| Figure 131. Lilium. |
—
paulatim … fastigio,
sloping gradually towards the bottom.
[*] 235.30.
teretes,
round, like a cylinder, while the word
rotundus means round like a ball.—
huc,
in these; cf. same word in
l. 24.
[*] 235.31.
praeusti: to harden the point.
[*] 236.2.
singuli … exculcabantur,
a foot of each [stake] was packed down with earth at the bottom.
[*] 236.7.
taleae: blocks of wood or stakes with iron barbed points fixed in them. Several of these hooks have been found in excavations on this site; see Fig. 132.
 |
| Figure 132. Stimulus. |
—
totae,
their whole length, so that only the hooks projected.
