Hunt the lion with a tiled phalanx

Military hunting. Instead of exercise, hunting of lions will also be attached to an army. Lions catch the swift by speed, and pull down the strong by strength. No one of men would take them alive by force, but by timing and art and engine: what does not come by strength is accomplished by thought. The most hegemonic of the beasts — lightest and fastest and most fight-ready — is taken by various manners, of which, in this writing, I will recount those useful to an army.

When the war-leader will exercise together with the army and will approve a hunt, he leads all the infantry out to a hunt dressed in the war-gear. The trackers of the strong beasts have announced the mark where a lion dens. Quietly therefore, having come on, each man holding to the next, they stand in a circle, throwing the shields round and fitting them both toward one another and upon one another, so that their overlay is an image of roof-tiles. The trumpets sound vehement, and the men shout together loud. The beast leaps from the den disturbed, and having seen both the wall of the hoplites and burning torches being brought (for the hoplites carry these instead of spears), he is quiet and remains and does not leap over the press of the shields.

Where the ground is more downhill, a machine is brought on which a broad and spread-out cage is set, carrying a kid. Behind the lion, men in full armor, having dry and whole hides, shout in, striking with woods. Struck by the sound and the sight and the cry, he rushes at a run upon the cage — the hoplites behind the machine having leaned down and being unseen by the beast, and those around the cage walled with high boards — so that, seeming to escape by that way alone, he may be mastered. This then is one manner of hunting for a phalanx being exercised; the others I have recounted elsewhere.