Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 2.djvu/168

 l6o THE GREATEST OF HELLENIC BATTLES [v have put an enemy to flight, but, having once defeated him, they do not follow him far or long. 74 Thus, or nearly thus, went the battle, by far the greatest of Hellenic battles which had taken Numbers of the s/nin. . . i r i i i place ior a long tmie, and iought by the most famous cities. The Lacedaemonians exposed the arms of the enemies' dead, and made a trophy of them ; they then plundered the bodies, and taking up their own dead carried them away to Tegea, where they were buried ; the enemies' dead they gave back under a flag of truce. Of the Argives, Orneatae, and Cleonaeans there fell seven hundred, of the Mantineans two hundred, and of the Athen- ians, including their settlers in Aegina *, two hundred, and both their generals. As to the Lacedaemonians, their allies were not hard pressed and did not incur any con- siderable loss ; how many of themselves fell it was hard to ascertain precisely, but their dead are reported to have numbered about three hundred. 75 Just before the battle, Pleistoanax, the other king, led out of Sparta a reinforcement composed The Lacedaemonians ,-, , , , •,• i i go home and celebrate o^ the elder and younger citizens''; he the Carnea. Great had proceeded as far as Tegea when moral effect of the j^g heard of the victory, and returned. The Lacedaemonians sent and counter- manded the reinforcements from Corinth and beyond the Isthmus; they then went home themselves and, dismissing the allies, celebrated the festival of the Carnea, for which/ this happened to be the season. Thus, by a single action, J they wiped out the charge of cowardice, which was due to  their misfortune at Sphacteria, and of general stupidity and v J sluggishness, then current against them in Hellas. They 1 were now thought ''to have been hardly used by fortune c, ^ but in character to be the same as ever. The very day before the battle, the Epidaurians with " Cp. ii. ^7 med. ^ Cp. v. 64 mcd. •■ Or. ' to have incurred disgrace through a mishap.' P