[338] ‘Bastion’ is the word used for a wooden tower or castle by Barbaro and by the translator of the Moscovite. Chalcondylas calls it helepolis, distinguishing it from the cannon which he names teleboles. Ducas speaks of cannon usually by the word χωνείαν, sometimes as τὰς πετροβολιμαίους χώνας or σκευαὶ πετροβόλοι or simply as τὸ σκεῦος; Phrantzes employs the word helepolis for a wooden turret (pp. 237, 244). The latter word is used by Critobulus for a cannon. It was an epithet applied to Helen, ‘the Taker of Cities.’ In the Bonn edition of Phrantzes it is also employed, both in the text and the Latin translation, for cannon; but a reference to the readings of the Paris MS. suggests that it is an error. Phrantzes’s words for cannons are teleboles and petroboles.
[339] The ‘Chastel de bois’ was ‘si haut, si grand et si fort qu’il maistrisoit le mur et dominait par-dessus’ (Tetaldi, p. 25).
[340] Barbaro states that it occupied a place called the ‘Cresca,’ possibly a copyist’s error for Cressus (= Chariseus), the name which I believe he gave indifferently with San Romano to the Pempton. Elsewhere he uses Cresca for the Golden Gate (e.g. p. 18). Possibly, however, he is referring to another turret, which was at the Golden Gate. Barbaro’s knowledge of places and names is not accurate. If Barbaro’s ‘bastion’ is the ‘helepole’ of which Phrantzes speaks (p. 245), then the three writers agree that the principal turret was at the Romanus Gate.
[341] The Moscovite, 1087; Phrantzes, 247.
[342] Leonard, p. 93: ‘Mauritius Cataneus ... inter portam Pighi, id est fontis, usque ad Auream contra ligneum castrum, pellibus boum contectum, oppositum accurate decertat.’ Cardinal Isidore, in the Lamentatio, says, p. 676: ‘Admoventur urbi ligneae turres.’
[343] Barbaro, under dates of May 21, 22, 23, 24, and 25.
[344] As to the question whether there was water in the foss, see Professor Van Millingen’s Byz. Constantinople, pp. 57–8.
[345] Crit. xxxi. Ἀλλὰ τοῦτο μὲν ὕστερον περιττὸν ἔδοξε, καὶ ματαία δαπάνη, τῶν μηχανῶν τὸ πᾶν κατεργασαμένων.
[346] The return, as mentioned, was on May 23, but is given by Barbaro under the 3rd. This is one of the passages which show that his diary was revised and added to after the siege.
[347] Crit. xlvi.; Pusculus, iv. 889, says: