Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/408

 tf8G fflSTOKY OF GREECE. tified place, would lend his cordial aid to the Bceotiau de fence. 1 Finding his exhortations favorably received, Pagondas con ducted the army by a rapid march to a position close to the Athenians. He was anxious to fight them before they should have retreated farther ; and, moreover, the day was nearly spent, it was already late in the afternoon. Having reached a spot where he was only separated from the Athenians by a hill, which prevented either army from seeing the other, he marshalled his troops in the array proper for fighting. The Theban hoplites, with their dependent allies, ranged in a depth of not less than twenty-five shields, occupied the right wing : the hoplites. of Haliartus, Koroneia, Kopae, and its neighborhood, were in the centre : those of Thespice, Tanagra, and Orchomenus, on the left ; for Orchomenus, being the second city in Bceotia next to Thebes, obtained a second post of honor at the opposite extremity of the line. Each contingent adopted its own mode of marshalling the hoplites, and its own depth of files : on this point there was no uniformity, a remarkable proof of the prevalence of dissentient custom in Greece, and how much each town, even among con- federates, stood apart as a separate unit. 2 Thucydides specifies only the prodigious depth of the Theban hoplites ; respecting the rest, he merely intimates that no common rule was followed. There is another point also which he does not specify, but which, though we learn it only on the inferior authority of Diodorus, appears both true and important. The front ranks of the The- ban heavy-armed were filled by three hundred select warriors, of distinguished bodily strength, valor, and discipline, who were accustomed to fight in pairs, each man being attached to his neighbor by a peculiar tie of intimate friendship. These pairs 1 Thucyd. iv, 92. oi 6e oA/lot (if CKaaroi ETV^OV. What is still more remarkable, in the battle of Mantineia, in 418 B.C. between the Lacedaemonians on one side and the Athenians, Argeians Mantineians, etc., on the other, the different lochi or divisions of the Lacedaemonian army were not all marshalled in the same depth of files Each lochage, or commander of the lochus, directed the depth of his own division (Thucyd. v, 68).
 * Thucyd. iv, 93. CTT' uanidae 6s nevre fjv KOI cluoai Qqfiaioi ira^avro,