Meanwhile it appears that Agis had found himself disappointed in his operations upon the water. He had either not done so much damage, or not spread so much terror, as he had expected: and he accordingly desisted, putting himself again in march to resume his position at the Herakleion, and supposing that his enemies still retained their position on the hill. But in the course of this march he came suddenly upon the Argeian and allied army where he was not in the least prepared to see them: they were not only in the plain, but already drawn up in perfect order of battle. The Mantineians occupied the right wing, the post of honor, because the ground was in their territory: next to them stood their dependent Arcadian allies: then the chosen Thousand-regiment of Argos, citizens of wealth and family, trained in arms at the cost of the state: alongside of them, the remaining Argeian hoplites, with their dependent allies of Kleônæ and Orneæ: last of all, on the left wing, stood the Athenians, their hoplites as well as their horsemen.
It was with the greatest surprise that Agis and his army beheld this unexpected apparition. To any other Greeks than Lacedæmonians, the sudden presentation of a formidable enemy would have occasioned a feeling of dismay from which they would have found it difficult to recover; and even the Lacedæmonians, on this occasion, underwent a momentary shock unparalleled in their previous experience.[114] But they now felt the full advantage of their rigorous training and habit of military obedience, as well as of that subordination of officers which was peculiar to themselves in Greece. In other Grecian armies orders were proclaimed to the troops in a loud voice by a herald, who received them personally from the general: each taxis, or company, indeed, had its own taxiarch, but the latter did not receive his orders separately from the general, and seems to have had no personal responsibility for the execution of them by his soldiers. Subordinate and responsible military authority was not recognized. Among the Lacedæmonians, on the contrary, there was a regular gradation of military and responsible authority, “commanders of commanders,” each of whom had his special duty in insuring the execution of orders.[115] Every order emanated from the Spartan king when he was present, and was given to the polemarchs (each commanding a mora, the largest military division), who intimated it to the lochagi, or colonels, of the respective lochi. These again gave command to each pentekontêr, or captain of a pentekosty; lastly, he to the enômotarch, who commanded the lowest subdivision, called an enômoty. The soldier thus received no immediate orders except from the enômotarch, who was in the first instance responsible for his enômoty; but the pentekontêr and the lochage were responsible also each for his larger division; the pentekosty including four enômoties, and the lochus four pentekosties, at least so the numbers stood on this occasion. All the various military manœuvres were familiar to the Lacedæmonians 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[116] 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 Lacedæmonian line belonged by ancient privilege to the Skiritæ; mountaineers of the border district 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 Periœki, with peculiar duties as well as peculiar privileges. Numbered among the bravest and most active men in Peloponnesus, 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.[117] Next to the Skiritæ, who were six hundred in number, stood the enfranchised Helots, recently returned from serving with Brasidas in Thrace, and the Neodamôdes, both probably summoned home from Lepreum, where we were told before that they had been planted. After them, in the centre of the entire line, came the Lacedæmonian lochi, seven in number, with the Arcadian dependent allies, Heræan and Mænalian, near them. Lastly, in the right wing, stood the Tegeans, with a small division of Lacedæmonians occupying the extreme right, as the post of honor. On each flank there were some Lacedæmonian horsemen.[118]
Thucydidês, with a frankness which enhances the value of his testimony wherever he gives it positively, informs us that he cannot pretend to set down the number of either army. It is evident that this silence is not for want of having inquired; but none of the answers which he received appeared to him trustworthy: the extreme secrecy of Lacedæmonian politics admitted of no certainty about their numbers, while the empty numerical boasts of other Greeks were not less misleading. In the absence of assured information about aggregate number, the historian gives us some general information accessible to every inquirer, and some facts visible to a spectator. From his language it is conjectured, with some probability, by Dr. Thirlwall and others, that he was himself present at the battle, though in what capacity we cannot determine, as he was an exile from his country. First, he states that the Lacedæmonian army appeared more numerous than that of the enemy. Next he tells us, that independent of the Skiritæ on the left, who were six hundred in number, the remaining Lacedæmonian front, to the extremity of their right wing, consisted of four hundred and forty-eight men, each enômoty having four men in front. In respect to depth, the different enômoties were not all equal; but for the most part, the files were eight deep. There were seven lochi in all (apart from the Skiritæ); each lochus comprised four pentekosties, each pentekosty contained four enômoties.[119] Multiplying four hundred and forty-four by eight, and adding the six hundred Skiritæ, this would make a total of four thousand one hundred and eighty-four hoplites, besides a few horsemen on each flank. Respecting light-armed, nothing is said. I have no confidence in such an estimate—but the total is smaller than we should have expected, considering that the Lacedæmonians had marched out from Sparta with their entire force on a pressing emergency, and that they had only sent home one-sixth of their total, their oldest and youngest soldiers.
It does not appear that the generals on the Argeian side made any attempt to charge while the Lacedæmonian battle-array was yet incomplete. It was necessary for them, according to Grecian practice, to wind up the courage of their troops by some words of exhortation and encouragement: and before these were finished, the Lacedæmonians may probably have attained their order. The Mantineian officers reminded their countrymen that the coming battle would decide whether Mantineia should continue to be a free and imperial city, with Arcadian dependencies of her own, as she now was, or should again be degraded into a dependency of Lacedæmon. The Argeian leaders dwelt upon the opportunity which Argos now had of recovering her lost ascendency in Peloponnesus, and of revenging herself upon her worst enemy and neighbor. The Athenian troops were exhorted to show themselves worthy of the many brave allies with whom they were now associated, as well as to protect their own territory and empire by vanquishing their enemy in Peloponnesus.
It illustrates forcibly the peculiarity of Lacedæmonian character, that to them no similar words of encouragement were addressed either by Agis or any of the officers. “They knew (says the historian[120]) that long practice beforehand in the business of war, was a better preservative than fine speeches on the spur of the moment.” As among professional soldiers, bravery was assumed as a thing of course, without any special exhortation: but mutual suggestions were heard among them with a view to get their order of battle and position perfect, which at first it probably was not, from the sudden and hurried manner in which they had been constrained to form. Moreover, various war-songs, perhaps those of Tyrtæus, were chanted in the ranks. At length the word was given to attack: the numerous pipers in attendance—an hereditary caste at Sparta—began to play, while the slow, solemn, and equable march of the troops adjusted itself to the time given by these instruments without any break or wavering in the line. A striking contrast to this deliberate pace was presented by the enemy: who having no pipers or other musical instruments, rushed forward to the charge with a step vehement and even furious,[121] fresh from the exhortations just addressed to them.
It was the natural tendency of all Grecian armies, when coming into conflict, to march not exactly straight forward, but somewhat aslant towards the right. The soldiers on the extreme right of both armies set the example of such inclination, in order to avoid exposing their own unshielded side; while for the same reason every man along the line took care to keep close to the shield of his right-hand neighbor. We see from hence that, with equal numbers, the right was not merely the post of honor, but also of comparative safety. So it proved on the present occasion, even the Lacedæmonian discipline being noway exempt from this cause of disturbance. Though the Lacedæmonian front, from their superior numbers, was more extended than that of the enemy, still their right files did not think themselves safe without slanting still farther to the right, and thus outflanked very greatly the Athenians on the opposite left wing; while on the opposite side the Mantineians who formed the right wing, from the same disposition to keep the left shoulder forward, outflanked, though not in so great a degree, the Skiritæ and Brasideians on the Lacedæmonian left. King Agis, whose post was with the lochi in the centre, saw plainly that when the armies closed, his left would be certainly taken in flank and perhaps even in the rear. Accordingly, he thought it necessary to alter his dispositions even at this critical moment, which he relied upon being able to accomplish through the exact discipline, practised evolutions, and slow march, of his soldiers.
The natural mode of meeting the impending danger would have been to bring round a division from the extreme right, where it could well be spared, to the extreme left against the advancing Mantineians. But the ancient privilege of the Skiritæ, who always fought by themselves on the extreme left, forbade such an order.[122] Accordingly, Agis gave signal to the Brasideians and Skiritæ to make a flank movement on the left so as to get on equal front with the Mantineians; while in order to fill up the vacancy thus created in his line, he sent orders to the two polemarchs Aristoklês and Hipponoidas, who had their lochi on the extreme right of the line, to move to the rear and take post on the right of the Brasideians, so as again to close up the line. But these two polemarchs, who had the safest and most victorious place in the line, chose to keep it, disobeying his express orders: so that Agis, when he saw that they did not move, was forced to send a second order countermanding the flank movement of the Skiritæ, and directing them to fall in upon the centre, back into their former place. But it had now become too late to execute this second command before the hostile armies closed: and the Skiritæ and Brasideians were thus assailed while in disorder and cut off from their own centre. The Mantineians, finding them in this condition, defeated and drove them back; while the chosen Thousand of Argos, breaking in by the vacant space between the Brasideians and the Lacedæmonian centre, took them on the right flank and completed their discomfiture. They were routed and pursued even to the Lacedæmonian baggage-wagons in the rear; some of the elder troops who guarded the wagons being slain, and the whole Lacedæmonian left wing altogether dispersed.
But the victorious Mantineians and their comrades, thinking only of what was immediately before them, wasted thus a precious time when their aid was urgently needed elsewhere. Matters passed very differently on the Lacedæmonian centre and right; where Agis, with his body-guard of three hundred chosen youths called Hippeis, and with the Spartan lochi, found himself in front conflict with the centre and left of the enemy;—with the Argeians, their elderly troops and the so-called Five Lochi, with the Kleonæans and Orneates, dependent allies of Argos, and with the Athenians. Over all these troops they were completely victorious, after a short resistance, indeed, on some points with no resistance at all. So formidable was the aspect and name of the Lacedæmonians, that the opposing troops gave way without crossing spears; and even with a panic so headlong, that they trod down each other in anxiety to escape.[123] While thus defeated in front, they were taken in flank by the Tegeans and Lacedæmonians on the right of Agis’s army, and the Athenians here incurred serious hazard of being all cut to pieces, had they not been effectively aided by their own cavalry close at hand. Moreover Agis, having decidedly beaten and driven them back was less anxious to pursue them than to return to the rescue of his own defeated left wing; so that even the Athenians, who were exposed both in flank and front, were enabled to effect their retreat in safety. The Mantineians and the Argeian Thousand, though victorious on their part of the line, yet seeing the remainder of their army in disorderly flight, had little disposition to renew the combat against Agis and the conquering Lacedæmonians. They sought only to effect their retreat, which however could not be done without severe loss, especially on the part of the Mantineians; and which Agis might have prevented altogether, had not the Lacedæmonian system, enforced on this occasion by the counsels of an ancient Spartan named Pharax, enjoyed abstinence from prolonged pursuit against a defeated enemy.[124]
There fell in this battle seven hundred men of the Argeians, Kleonæans, and Orneates; two hundred Athenians, together with both the generals Lachês and Nikostratus; and two hundred Mantineians. The loss of the Lacedæmonians, though never certainly known, from the habitual secrecy of their public proceedings, was estimated at about three hundred men. They stripped the enemy’s dead, spreading out to view the arms thus acquired, and selecting some for a trophy; then picked up their own dead and carried them away for burial at Tegea, granting the customary burial-truce to the defeated enemy. Pleistoanax, the other Spartan king, had advanced as far as Tegea with a reinforcement composed of the elder and younger citizens; but on hearing of the victory, he returned back home.[125]