BATTLE OF CNIDUS
Near Cnidus they met the Lacedæmonian fleet, and the brave but inexperienced Pisander, brother-in-law of Agesilaus, would not avoid a battle. Conon and Evagoras led the Grecian force against him: Pharnabazus took the particular command of the Phœnician, forming a second line. The Grecian force alone, according to report, though Xenophon does not speak of it as certain, outnumbered the Lacedæmonian fleet. The allies in the left of the Lacedæmonian line, alarmed at the view of the enemy’s great superiority, presently fled. Pisander was then quickly overpowered. His galley being driven on the Cnidian shore, the crew mostly escaped; but, refusing himself to quit his ship, he was killed aboard. The victory of Conon was complete: according to Diodorus fifty ships were taken.
Such was the disastrous event, the news of which met Agesilaus on his arrival on the confines of Bœotia. The first information struck him with extreme anguish and dejection. Presently, however, the consideration occurring how disadvantageous, in the existing circumstances, the communication of it might be, he had command enough of himself to check all appearance of his feelings. His army consisted mostly of volunteers, attached indeed to his character, but more to his good fortune; and bound, as by no necessity, so by no very firm principle, to partake in expected distress. With such an army he was to meet, within a few days, the combined forces of one of the most powerful confederacies ever formed in Greece. To support, or, if possible, raise, the confidence and zeal of his troops, though by a device of efficacy to be of short duration, might be greatly important. He therefore directed report to be authoritatively circulated that Pisander, though at the expense of his life, had gained a complete victory; and, to give sanction to the story, he caused the ceremony of the evangelian sacrifice to be performed, and distributed the offered oxen among the soldiers.
Resuming then his march, in the vale of Coronea he met the confederate army, consisting of the flower of the Bœotian, Athenian, Argive, Corinthian, Eubœan, Locrian, and Ænian forces. Expecting this formidable assemblage, he had been attentive to all opportunity for acquiring addition to his own strength. Some he had gained from the Grecian towns on his march through Thrace. On the Bœotian border he was joined by the strength of Phocis, and also of the Bœotian Orchomenos, always inimical to Thebes. A Lacedæmonian mora had been sent from Peloponnesus to reinforce him, with half a mora which had been in garrison in Orchomenos. The numbers of the two armies were thus nearly equal; but the Asiatic Grecian troops, which made a large part of that under Agesilaus, were reckoned very inferior to the European. It was in the spirit of the institutions of Lycurgus that Agesilaus, otherwise simple, even as a Spartan, in his dress and manner, paid much attention to what our great dramatic poet has called “the pomp and circumstance of war”; aware how much it attaches the general mind, gives the soldier to be satisfied with himself, and binds his fancy to the service he is engaged in. Scarlet or crimson appears to have been a common uniform of the Greeks, and the army of Agesilaus appeared, in Xenophon’s phrase, all brass and scarlet.