Greek Texts & Translations

7.5.11Now when Epaminondas had arrived within the city ^note of the Spartiatae, he did not attempt to enter at the point where his troops would be likely to have to fight on the ground-level and be pelted from the house-tops, nor where they would fight with no advantage over the few, although they were many; but after gaining the precise position from which he believed that he would enjoy an advantage, he undertook to descend (instead of ascending) into the city. 7.5.12As for what happened thereupon, one may either hold the deity responsible, or one may say that nobody could withstand desperate men. For when Archidamus led the advance with not so much as a hundred men and, after crossing the very thing ^note which seemed to present an obstacle, marched uphill against the adversary, at that moment the fire-breathers, the men who had defeated the Lacedaemonians, the men who were altogether superior in numbers and were occupying higher ground besides, did not withstand the attack of the troops under Archidamus, but gave way. 7.5.13And those in the van of Epaminondas' army were slain, but when the troops from within the city, exulting in their victory, pursued farther than was fitting, they in their turn were slain; for, as it seems, the line had been drawn by the deity indicating how far victory had been granted them. Archidamus accordingly set up a trophy at the spot where he had won the victory, and gave back under a truce those of the enemy who had fallen there. 7.5.14Epaminondas, on the other hand, reflecting ^note 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, ^note 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.

7.5.15They 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. 7.5.16Here, 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 ^note enemy they crashed upon them, eagerly desiring to win back their ancestral repute. 7.5.17And 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.