History of the Peloponnesian War

Wherefore Agis, fearing lest his left wing should be encompassed, and supposing the Mantineans to be come in far, signified unto the Sciritae and Brasideians to draw out part of their bands, and therewith to equalise their left wing to the right wing of the Mantineans; and into the void space he commanded to come up Hipponoidas and Aristocles, two colonels, with their bands out of the right wing, and to fall in there and make up the breach, conceiving that more than enough would still be remaining in their right wing, and that the left wing opposed to the Mantineans would be the stronger.

But it happened (for he commanded it in the very onset and on the sudden) both that Aristocles and Hipponoidas refused to go to the place commanded (for which they were afterwards banished Sparta, as thought to have disobeyed out of cowardice), and that the enemy had in the meantime also charged; and when those which he commanded to go to the place of the Sciritae went not, they could no more reunite themselves nor close again the empty space.

But the Lacedaemonians, though they had the worst at this time in every point for skill, yet in valour they manifestly showed themselves superior.