Hellenica

Epaminondas, on the other hand, reflecting[*](362 B.C.) that the Arcadians would be coming to Lacedaemon to bring aid, had no desire to fight against them and against all the Lacedaemonians after they had come together,[*](cp. 10.) especially since they had met with success and his men with disaster; so he marched back as rapidly as he could to Tegea, and allowed his hoplites to rest there, but sent his horsemen on to Mantinea, begging them to endure this additional effort and explaining to them that probably all the cattle of the Mantineans were outside the city and likewise all the people, particularly as it was harvest time.

They then set forth; but the Athenian horsemen, setting out from Eleusis, had taken dinner at the Isthmus and, after having passed through Cleonae also, chanced to be approaching Mantinea or to be already quartered within the wall in the houses. And when the enemy were seen riding toward the city, the Mantineans begged the Athenian horsemen to help them, if in any way they could; for outside the wall were all their cattle and the labourers, and likewise many children and older men of the free citizens. When the Athenians heard this they sallied forth to the rescue, although they were still without breakfast, they and their horses as well.

Here, again, who would not admire the valour of these men also? For although they saw that the enemy were far more numerous, and although a misfortune had befallen the horsemen at Corinth, they took no account of this, nor of the fact that they were about to fight with the Thebans and the Thessalians, who were thought to be the best of horsemen, but rather, being ashamed to be at hand and yet render no service to their allies, just as soon as they saw the[*](362 B.C.) enemy they crashed upon them, eagerly desiring to win back their ancestral repute.

And by engaging in the battle they did indeed prove the means of saving for the Mantineans everything that was outside the wall, but there fell brave men among them; and those also whom they slew were manifestly of a like sort; for neither side had any weapon so short that they did not reach one another therewith. And the Athenians did not abandon their own dead, and they gave back some of the enemy’s under a truce.

As for Epaminondas, on the other hand, when he considered that within a few days it would be necessary for him to depart, because the time fixed[*]( Apparently either by the Theban government or by agreement with the allies.) for the campaign had expired, and that if he should leave behind him unprotected the people to whom he had come as an ally, they would be besieged by their adversaries, while he himself would have completely tarnished his own reputation, — for with a large force of hoplites he had been defeated at Lacedaemon by a few, and defeated likewise in a cavalry battle at Mantinea, and through his expedition to Peloponnesus had made himself the cause of the union of the Lacedaemonians, the Arcadians, the Achaeans, the Eleans, and the Athenians, — he thought for these reasons that it was not possible for him to pass by the enemy without a battle, since he reasoned that if he were victorious, he would make up for all these things, while if he were slain, he deemed that such an end would be honourable for one who was striving to leave to his fatherland dominion over Peloponnesus.

Now the fact that Epaminondas himself entertained such thoughts,[*](362 B.C.) seems to me to be in no wise remarkable, — for such thoughts are natural to ambitious men; but that he had brought his army to such a point that the troops flinched from no toil, whether by night or by day, and shrank from no peril, and although the provisions they had were scanty, were nevertheless willing to be obedient, this seems to me to be more remarkable.

For at the time when he gave them the last order to make ready, saying that there would be a battle, the horsemen eagerly whitened their helmets at his command, the hoplites of the Arcadians painted clubs[*]( The Theban device.) upon their shields, as though they were Thebans, and all alike sharpened their spears and daggers and burnished their shields.