History of the Peloponnesian War

On that occasion the Sciritae formed their left wing; who alone of the Lacedaemonians have always that post by themselves. Next to them were the soldiers who had served with Brasidas in Thrace, and the Neodamodes with them. Then came the Lacedaemonians themselves, with their lochi posted one after the other; by their side the Arcadians of Heraea; after them the Maenalians; and on the right wing the Tegeans, with a few of the Lacedaemonians holding the extreme position. Their cavalry was posted on each wing.

The Lacedaemonians, then, were drawn up in this way. On the side of their opponents, their right wing was occupied by the Mantineans, because the action was to be fought in their country; and by their side were the Arcadian allies. Then came the thousand picked men of the Argives, for whom the state had for a long time furnished at the public expense a course of training in military matters; next to them the other Argives; and after these, their allies the Cleonaeans and Orneans; then the Athenians, holding the extreme left, and their own cavalry with them.

Such was the order of battle and the preparation on both sides. The army of the Lacedaemonians appeared the larger of the two;

but as for stating any number, either of the several divisions on each side, or of their collective force, I could not do it with accuracy. For the number of the Lacedaemonians, on account of the secrecy of their government, was not known; and that of the others, in consequence of men's natural tendency to boasting with regard to their own numbers, was regarded with distrust.

From the following mode of calculating, however, one may see the number of Lacedaemonians that was present on that occasion. There were engaged in the battle seven lochi, exclusive of the Sciritae, who amounted to six hundred; and [*]( The regular complement of the enomotia was twenty-four men, besides its captain: the pentecosty was composed of two enomotiae, and the lochus of two pentecostyes. —Arnold. See his whole note on this passage.) in each lochus there were four pentecpstyes, and in the pentecosty four enomotiae. In the first rank of the enomoty there were four fighting men. [*]( As the number of the ranks must have depended on that of the files, and have been the same throughout the army, if that were, or have differed, because that did; it is evident that any change which the commander-in-chief might have made in the previous dispositions of the several lochagi, must have affected the breadth of the ranks as well as the depth of the files, though the latter only is mentioned, or rather implied, by our author. The supposition of such a change is warranted by the variation in the tenses of the verbs; and is the only way of solving the difficulty noticed by Dobree— that the depth of the line in each lochus appears to be left to the discretion of its commander, even after the number of men in the front rank of all of them has been said to have been uniformly four; though after this had once been settled, the other must, of course, have been no less uniform. See Poppo's note) In depth, though they had not all been drawn up alike, but as each lochagus chose, they took their position on the field uniformly eight deep. And thus, along the whole line, the first rank consisted of four hundred and forty-eight men, besides the Sciritae.