Classical literature; Greece -- History -- Peloponnesian War, 431-404 B.C.; Greece -- History -- Spartan and Theban Supremacies, 404-362 B.C.
On the next day, however, the Argive troops arrived in all haste,
hurrying to the rescue, and found the enemy duly drawn up. The
Lacedaemonians were on their own right, the men of Sicyon next, and
leaning against the eastern wall the Corinthian exiles, one hundred and
fifty strong. (9) Their opponents marshalled their lines face to face in
correspondence: Iphicrates with his mercenaries abutting on the eastern
wall; next to them the Argives, whilst the Corinthians of the city held
their left. In the pride inspired by numbers they began advancing at
once. They overpowered the Sicyonians, and tearing asunder the stockade,
pursued them to the sea and here slew numbers of them. At that instant
Pasimachus, the cavalry general, at the head of a handful of troopers,
seeing the Sicyonians sore presed, made fast the horses of his troops to
the trees, and relieving the Sicyonians of their heavy infantry shields,
advanced with his volunteers against the Argives. The latter, seeing the
Sigmas on the shields and taking them to be "Sicyonians," had not the
slightest fear. Whereupon, as the story goes, Pasimachus, exclaiming
in his broad Doric, "By the twin gods! these Sigmas will cheat you,
you Argives," came to close quarters, and in that battle of a handful
against a host, was slain himself with all his followers. In another
quarter of the field, however, the Corinthian exiles had got the better
of their opponents and worked their way up, so that they were now
touching the city circumvallation walls.
(9) See Grote, ix. p. 333 foll.
The Lacedaemonians, on their side, perceiving the discomfiture of the
Sicyonians, sprang out with timely aid, keeping the palisade-work on
their left. But the Argives, discovering that the Lacedaemonians were
behind them, wheeled round and came racing back, pouring out of the
palisade at full speed. Their extreme right, with unprotected flanks
exposed, fell victims to the Lacedaemonians; the rest, hugging the wall,
made good their retreat in dense masses towards the city. Here they
encountered the Corinthian exiles, and discovering that they had fallen
upon foes, swerved aside in the reverse direction. In this predicament
some mounted by the ladders of the city wall, and, leaping down from
its summit, were destroyed; (10) others yielded up their lives, thrust
through, as they jostled at the foot of the steps; others again were
literally trampled under one another's feet and suffocated.
(10) Or, "plunged from its summit into perdition." See Thuc. ii. 4.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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