History of the Peloponnesian War

The Athenian men of arms, in number no fewer than the enemy, were ordered by eight in file throughout; their horse they placed on either wing. But for light-armed soldiers, armed as was fit, there were none; nor was there any in the city. Those that went out followed the camp for the most part without arms, as being a general expedition both of citizens and strangers; and after they once began to make homeward, there stayed few behind.

When they were now in their order and ready to join battle, Hippocrates, the general, came into the army of the Athenians and encouraged them, speaking to this effect:

Men of Athens, my exhortation shall be short, but with valiant men it hath as much force as a longer, and is for a remembrance rather than a command.

Let no man think, because it is in the territory of another, that we therefore precipitate ourselves into a great danger that did not concern us. For in the territory of these men, you fight for your own. If we get the victory, the Peloponnesians will never invade our territories again, for want of the Boeotian horsemen. So that in one battle you shall both gain this territory and free your own.

Therefore march on against the enemy, every one as becometh the dignity both of his natural city, which he glorieth to be chief of all Greece, and of his ancestors, who having overcome these men at Oenophyta under the conduct of Myronides, were in times past masters of all Boeotia.