Page:History of Greece Vol VII.djvu/98

80 80 HISTORY OF GUKECK. ion), who intimated it to the lochagi, or colonels, of the respec- tive lochi. These again gave command to each pentekonter, or captain of a pentekosty ; lastly, he to the enomotarch, who com- manded the lowest subdivision, called an enomoty. The soldier thus received no immediate orders except from the enomotarch, who was in the first instance responsible for his enomoty ; but the pentekonter and the lochage were responsible also each for his larger division ; the pentekosty including four enomoties, and the lochus four pentekosties, at least so the numbers stood on this occasion. All the various military manreuvres were familiar to the Lacedaemonians from their unremitting drill, so that their armies enjoyed the advantage of readier obedience along with more systematic command. Accordingly, though thus taken by surprise, and called on now for the first time in their lives, to form in the presence of an enemy, they only manifested the greater promptitude 1 and anxious haste in obeying the orders of Agis, transmitted through the regular series of officers. The battle array was attained with regularity as well as with speed. The extreme left of the Lacedaemonian line belonged by an- cient privilege to the Skiritae ; mountaineers of the border dis- trict of Laconia, skirting the Arcadian Parrhasii, seemingly east of the Eurotas, near its earliest and highest course. These men, originally Arcadians, now constituted a variety of Laconian Periceki, with peculiar duties as well as peculiar privileges. Numbered among the bravest and most active men in Pelopon- nesus, they generally formed the vanguard in an advancing march ; and the Spartans stand accused of having exposed them to danger as well as toil with unbecoming recklessness. 2 Next to the Skirita?, who were six hundred in number, stood the en- franchised Helots, recently returned from serving with Brasidas in Thrace, and the Neodamodes, both probably summoned homo from Lepreum, where we were told before that they had been planted. After them, in the centre of the entire line, came the Lacedaemonian lochi, seven in number, with the Arcadian ds- 1 Thueyd. v, 66. ei-dvf v~b  v i a v- TUV, "Ayi<jor roii jaai/.tut; iKaora l$riyoviitvov Kara rbv v6fj.ov, etc. Laced, xiii, 6.
 * Xenophon, Cyroo. iv, 2. 1 : sec Diodor. xv, c. 32 ; Xenophon, Rup