The Aquileians fired down rocks from the walls and prepared a concoction of pitch and oil mixed with sulphur and bitumen, which they poured into empty jars with long handles. As soon as the army approached the walls, they set fire to the mixture and poured it out, showering it all together like rain on the besiegers. The pitch mixed with the other ingredients (see above), when poured out, penetrated through the exposed parts of the body and spread all over the person. Men tore off their burning breast-plates and other armour because the metal was getting red-hot, and the leather and wooden parts were burning and shrinking. And so one had the spectacle of soldiers who had actually stripped themselves, and of weapons that had been abandoned, looking like spoils of war—all this achieved not by military prowess, but by scientific skill. As a result of this incident a great number of soldiers lost their eyesight; or their faces and hands and any other exposed parts of their bodies were disfigured.
Edition :
Herodian. History of the Empire, Volume I: Books 1-4. Translated by C. R. Whittaker. Loeb Classical Library 454. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969.
Herodian. History of the Empire, Volume II: Books 5-8. Translated by C. R. Whittaker. Loeb Classical Library 455. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970.
