Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/330

 308 fflSTOBY OF GREECE. On the morrow they were visited by a herald, coming i'lutn those Ambrakiots who had fled into the Agrasan territory, after the battle of Olpae, and the subsequent pursuit. He came vitl> the customary request from defeated soldiers, for permission to bury their dead who had fallen in that pursuit. Neither he, nor those from whom he came, knew anything of the destruction of iheir brethren at Idomene, just as these latter had been igno- rant of the defeat at OlpaB ; while, on the other hand, the Akar- nanians in the camp, whose minds were full of the more recent and capital advantage at Idomene, supposed that the message referred to the men slain in that engagement. The numerous panoplies just acquired at Idomene lay piled up in the camp, and the herald, on seeing them, was struck with amazement at the size of the heap, so much exceeding the number of those who were missing in his own detachment. An Akarnanian present asked the reason of his surprise, and inquired how many of his comrades had been slain, meaning to refer to the slain at Idomene. "About two hundred," the herald replied. "Yet these arms here show, not that number, but more than a thousand men." " Then they are not the arms of those who fought with us." " Nay, but they are ; if ye were the persons who fought yesterday at Idomene." " We fought with no one yesterday : it was the day before yesterday, in the retreat." " O, then ye have to learn, that we were engaged yesterday with these others, who were on their march as reinforcement from the city of Am- brakia." The unfortunate herald now learned for the first time that the large reinforcement from his city had been cut to pieces. So acute was his feeling of mingled anguish and surprise, that he raised a loud cry of woe, and hurried away at once, without say- ing another word ; not even prosecuting his request about the burial of the dead bodies, which appears on this fatal occasion to have been neglected. 1 His grief was justified by the prodigious magnitude of the calamity, which Thucydides considers to have been the greatest that afflicted any Grecian city during the whole war prior to the peace of Nikias ; so incredibly great, indeed, that though be had ' Thacyd. iii, 113.