Hellenica

Meanwhile the Corinthian exiles, being victorious over the troops opposed to them, pushed their way through in the inland direction and got near the wall which surrounded the city. As for the Lacedaemonians, when they perceived that the forces opposed to the Sicyonians were victorious, they issued forth from the stockade and went to the rescue, keeping the stockade on their left. But when the Argives heard that the Lacedaemonians were in their rear, they turned around and burst out of the stockade again on the run. And those upon their extreme right were struck on their unprotected sides by the Lacedaemonians and killed, but those who were near the wall, crowded together in a disorderly mass, continued their retreat towards the city. When, however, they came upon the Corinthian exiles and discovered that they were enemies, they turned back again. Thereupon some of them, climbing up by the steps to the top of the wall, jumped down on the other side and were killed, others perished around the steps, being shoved and struck by the enemy, and still others[*](392 B.C.) were trodden under foot by one another and suffocated.

And the Lacedaemonians were in no uncertainty about whom they should kill; for then at least heaven granted them an achievement such as they could never even have prayed for. For to have a crowd of enemies delivered into their hands, frightened, panic-stricken, presenting their unprotected sides, no one rallying to his own defence, but all rendering all possible assistance toward their own destruction,—how could one help regarding this as a gift from heaven? On that day, at all events, so many fell within a short time that men accustomed to see heaps of corn, wood, or stones, beheld then heaps of dead bodies. Furthermore, the Boeotians of the garrison in the port were also killed, some upon the walls, and others after they had climbed up on the roofs of the ship-houses.

After this the Corinthians and Argives carried of their dead under a truce, and the allies of the Lacedaemonians came to their aid. And when they were gathered together, in the first place Praxitas decided to tear down a portion of the walls[*](I.e., the walls which connected Corinth with Lechaeum. cp. 7.) so as to make a passage through wide enough for an army, and secondly, putting himself at the head of his army, he advanced by the road to Megara and captured by storm, first Sidus and then Crommyon. And after stationing garrisons in these strongholds he marched back again; then he fortified Epieiceia, in order that it might serve as an outpost to protect the territory of his allies,[*](I.e., the Sicyonians.) and then disbanded his army and himself withdrew by the road to Lacedaemon.