Agesilaus

Here Diphridas, an ephor from Sparta, met him, with orders to invade Boeotia immediately. Therefore, although he was purposing to do this later with a larger armament, he thought it did not behoove him to disobey the magistrates, but said to those who were with him that the day was near for which they had come from Asia. He also sent for two divisions of the army at Corinth.

Then the Lacedaemonians at home, wishing to do him honour, made proclamation that any young man who wished might enlist in aid of the king. All enlisted eagerly, and the magistrates chose out the most mature and vigorous of them to the number of fifty, and sent them off. Agesilaüs now marched through the pass of Thermopylae, traversed Phocis, which was friendly to Sparta, entered Boeotia, and encamped near Chaeroneia. Here a partial eclipse of the sun occurred, and at the same time[*](August, 394 B.C.) news came to him of the death of Peisander, who was defeated in a naval battle off Cnidus by Pharnabazus and Conon.

Agesilaüs was naturally much distressed at these tidings, both because of the man thus lost, and of the city which had lost him; but nevertheless, that his soldiers might not be visited with dejection and fear as they were going into battle, he ordered the messengers from the sea to reverse their tidings and say that the Spartans were victorious in the naval battle. He himself also came forth publicly with a garland on his head, offered sacrifices for glad tidings, and sent portions of the sacrificial victims to his friends.[*](The soldiers of Agesilaüs were consequently victorious in a skirmish with the enemy, according to Xenophon (Hell. iv. 3, 14).)

After advancing as far as Coroneia and coming within sight of the enemy, he drew up his army in battle array, giving the left wing to the Orchomenians, while he himself led forward the right. On the other side, the Thebans held the right wing themselves, and the Argives the left. Xenophon says that this battle was unlike any ever fought,[*](Hellenica, iv. 3, 16.) and he was present himself and fought on the side of Agesilaüs, having crossed over with him from Asia.[*](Cf. Xenophon’s Anabasis, v. 3, 6.)

The first impact, it is true, did not meet with much resistance, nor was it long contested, but the Thebans speedily routed the Orchomenians, as Agesilaüs did the Argives. Both parties, however, on hearing that their left wings were overwhelmed and in flight, turned back. Then, although the victory might have been his without peril if he had been willing to refrain from attacking the Thebans in front and to smite them in the rear after they had passed by, Agesilaüs was carried away by passion and the ardour of battle and advanced directly upon them, wishing to bear them down by sheer force.