The Roman History · Amm. 24.4.19

But in times of emergency nothing is so unimportant as not occasionally to influence great affairs, even contrary to all expectation. For when, as had often happened, the two sides were fighting slackly, and on the point of giving over, a battering-ram which had just been brought up, being pushed forward awkwardly, struck down a tower which was higher than any of the others, and was very strongly built of baked brick, and its fall brought down all the adjacent portion of the wall with a mighty crash.

Ammianus Marcellinus · translated by C. D. Yonge · 1911 reprint
C. D. Yonge translation (preface dated February 1862); G. Bell and Sons, 1911; Project Gutenberg #28587
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