History of the Peloponnesian War

Now as he gave these orders at the very moment of the charge, and on a sudden, the consequence was, that Aristocles and Hipponoidas would not move on, (they were for this offence afterwards banished from Sparta, being thought to have shown cowardice,) and that so the enemy closed with them before any thing could be done; and moreover, that when he ordered the Sciritae to rejoin their comrades, since the lochi did not move on to their support, neither could these now fill up the line.

But when the Lacedaemonians were most decidedly and in every respect beaten in point of skill, at that very time [*]( Or, proved that it was mainly through their courage that they won the victory. ) they proved themselves no less superior in point of courage.

For when they had come to close quarters with their opponents, though the right wing of the Mantineans broke their Sciritan and Brasidean corps, and the Mantineans and their allies, with the thousand picked men of the Argives, rushing in through the open and unclosed part of the line, cut up the Lacedaemonians, having surrounded and broken them, and drove them to the baggage waggons, and killed some of the veterans who were posted as a guard over them:

though in this part of the field, I say, the Lacedaemonians were worsted, yet with the rest of their forces, and especially the centre, where was King Agis, and around him the three hundred horsemen, [*]( "He adds καλούμενοι, because, though called horsemen, they were really infantry. The actual cavalry were on the wings, as had been already stated, ch. 67. 1. These three hundred horsemen, as they were called, were originally, we may suppose, so many chiefs, who fought round their king, not on foot, but in their chariots; this being the early sense of ἱππεύν and ἱππότης as we find from Homer. —Arnold.) as they are called, they fell on the veterans of the Argives, and what are named the five lochi, with the Cleonaeans, the Orneans, and those of the Athenians who were posted next to them, and put them to flight; the majority not having even waited to close with them, but having, on the approach of the Lacedaemonians, immediately given way, and some of them having been even trodden under foot, [*]( Literally, that the overtaking might not anticipate them. For the different explanations of this very doubtful expression, see Poppo's or Arnold's note. I have followed Heilman and Haack in considering τὴν ἐγκατάληψιν as the subject of φθῆναι, (though it is, what Poppo calls it, durior explanatio; ) because in every other instance that I have observed, in which Thucydides uses the article τοῦ with an infinitive, whether with μὴ or without it, it expresses purpose, and not effect, or cause. See I. 4; II. 4. 2; 32. 1; V. 27. 2; VIII. 14. 1; 39. 4. The only one of these passages which might seem an exception to what has been stated, is the second; and that is not really one, if τοῦ μὴ ἐκφεύγειν be joined with διώκοντας, as Poppo takes it.) in their hurry to avoid being anticipated and overtaken.