Sextus Iulius Frontinus, vir consularis de re militari

...the sea flows into via very narrow mouths, ordered his soldiers to disembark secretly onto the shore and, with wheels placed underneath, dragged the ships to the nearby port of Munychia. Herculeius, a legate of Sertorius, when he had entered a long and narrow path between two steep mountains in Spain leading a few cohorts, discovered a huge force of the enemy arriving. He pressed a trench across the path between the mountains and set a rampart built of material on fire. Thus, having cut off the enemy, he escaped. Caius Caesar, in the Civil War, when he was leading his forces against Afranius and had no opportunity to retreat without danger, as he stood, he secretly applied the first and second lines to the work behind him and made a trench fifteen feet deep, within which his armed soldiers withdrew at sunset. Pericles the Athenian, forced by the Peloponnesians into a place surrounded on all sides by steep cliffs and having only two exits, led a trench of huge width on one side, as if for the purpose of excluding the enemy, and began to move his soldiers on the other side as if he were about to break out through it. Those who were besieging him, not believing that Pericles' army would escape through the trench he had made, stood together at the path. Pericles, with bridges he had prepared thrown across the trench, sent his men out where they were not resisting. Lysimachus, one of those among whom the wealth of Alexander passed, when he had intended to pitch his camp on a high hill but was led into a lower one by the imprudence of his men, and feared an enemy attack from above, placed triple trenches within his rampart. Then, with deep trenches dug around all the tents, he confused the entire camp. After killing the enemy's approach and having made an attack with the earth and branches he had thrown over the trenches, he escaped to the higher ground. Gn. Fonteius Crassus in Spain, when he had set out with three thousand men to plunder and his plan was reported to Hasdrubal and only the highest ranks, at the beginning of the night, at a time when he was least expected, broke through the enemy's outposts.

Lucius Furius, when he had led his army into an unfavorable place and had decided to hide his anxiety so the others would not panic, gradually turned his route as if he were about to attack the enemy by a larger circuit. With the column turned, he led his army back safely, unaware of what was being done. Publius Decius, a tribune in the Samnite War, when the consul Cornelius Cossus was trapped by the enemy in unfavorable terrain, persuaded him to send a small band to occupy a hill that was nearby, and he offered himself as the leader of those being sent. Being summoned in a different direction, he drew away the enemy and released the consul, but Decius was surrounded and besieged in those narrow passes. By making a breakout at night, Decius was deceived and reached the consul safely with his soldiers. The same was done under the consul Attilius Calatinus by one whose name is variously reported; others call him Laberius, some...