better will he be protected. The man primarily responsible for this is
the first upon the right wing, who is always striving to withdraw from
the enemy his unarmed side; and the same apprehension makes the rest
follow him. On the present occasion the Mantineans reached with
their wing far beyond the Sciritae, and the Lacedaemonians and Tegeans
still farther beyond the Athenians, as their army was the largest.
Agis, afraid of his left being surrounded, and thinking that the
Mantineans outflanked it too far, ordered the Sciritae and
Brasideans to move out from their place in the ranks and make the line
even with the Mantineans, and told the Polemarchs Hipponoidas and
Aristocles to fill up the gap thus formed, by throwing themselves into
it with two companies taken from the right wing; thinking that his
right would still be strong enough and to spare, and that the line
fronting the Mantineans would gain in solidity.
However, as he gave these orders in the moment of the onset, and
at short notice, it so happened that Aristocles and Hipponoidas
would not move over, for which offence they were afterwards banished
from Sparta, as having been guilty of cowardice; and the enemy
meanwhile closed before the Sciritae (whom Agis on seeing that the two
companies did not move over ordered to return to their place) had time
to fill up the breach in question. Now it was, however, that the
Lacedaemonians, utterly worsted in respect of skill, showed themselves
as superior in point of courage. As soon as they came to close
quarters with the enemy, the Mantinean right broke their Sciritae
and Brasideans, and, bursting in with their allies and the thousand
picked Argives into the unclosed breach in their line, cut up and
surrounded the Lacedaemonians, and drove them in full rout to the
wagons, slaying some of the older men on guard there. But the
Lacedaemonians, worsted in this part of the field, with the rest of
their army, and especially the centre, where the three hundred
knights, as they are called, fought round King Agis, fell on the older
men of the Argives and the five companies so named, and on the
Cleonaeans, the Orneans, and the Athenians next them, and instantly
routed them; the greater number not even waiting to strike a blow, but
giving way the moment that they came on, some even being trodden under
foot, in their fear of being overtaken by their assailants.
The army of the Argives and their allies, having given way in this
quarter, was now completely cut in two, and the Lacedaemonian and
Tegean right simultaneously closing round the Athenians with the
troops that outflanked them, these last found themselves placed
between two fires, being surrounded on one side and already defeated
on the other. Indeed they would have suffered more severely than any
other part of the army, but for the services of the cavalry which they
had with them. Agis also on perceiving the distress of his left
opposed to the Mantineans and the thousand Argives, ordered all the
army to advance to the support of the defeated wing; and while this
took place, as the enemy moved past and slanted away from them, the
Athenians escaped at their leisure, and with them the beaten Argive
division. Meanwhile the Mantineans and their allies and the picked
body of the Argives ceased to press the enemy, and seeing their
friends defeated and the Lacedaemonians in full advance upon them,
took to flight. Many of the Mantineans perished; but the bulk of the
picked body of the Argives made good their escape. The flight and
retreat, however, were neither hurried nor long; the Lacedaemonians
fighting long and stubbornly until the rout of their enemy, but that
once effected, pursuing for a short time and not far.
Such was the battle, as nearly as possible as I have described it;
the greatest that had occurred for a very long while among the
Hellenes, and joined by the most considerable states. The
Lacedaemonians took up a position in front of the enemy's dead, and
immediately set up a trophy and stripped the slain; they took up their
own dead and carried them back to Tegea, where they buried them, and
restored those of the enemy under truce. The Argives, Orneans, and
Cleonaeans had seven hundred killed; the Mantineans two hundred, and