On both sides, the armies were marshalled, and order taken for battle. But the situation of the Argeians was in reality little less than desperate: for while they had Agis and his division in their front, the Corinthian detachment was near enough to take them in flank, and the Bœotians marching along the undefended road through the Trêtus would attack them in the rear. The Bœotian cavalry too would act with full effect upon them in the plain, since neither Argos, Elis, nor Mantineia, seemed to have possessed any horsemen; a description of force which ought to have been sent from Athens, though from some cause which does not appear, the Athenian contingent had not yet arrived. Nevertheless, in spite of this very critical position, both the Argeians and their allies were elate with confidence and impatient for battle; thinking only of the division of Agis immediately in their front, which appeared to be inclosed between them and their city, and taking no heed to the other formidable enemies in their flank and rear. But the Argeian generals were better aware than their soldiers of the real danger; and just as the two armies were about to charge, Alkiphron, proxenus of the Lacedæmonians at Argos, accompanied Thrasyllus, one of the five generals of the Argeians, to a separate parley with Agis, without the least consultation or privity on the part of their own army. They exhorted Agis not to force on a battle, assuring him that the Argeians were ready both to give and receive equitable satisfaction, in all matters of complaint which the Lacedæmonians might urge against them, and to conclude a just peace for the future. Agis, at once acquiescing in the proposal, granted them a truce of four months to accomplish what they had promised. He on his part also took this step without consulting either his army or his allies, simply addressing a few words of confidential talk to one of the official Spartans near him. Immediately, he gave the order for retreat, and the army, instead of being led to battle, was conducted out of the Argeian territory, through the Nemean road whereby the Bœotians had just been entering. But it required all the habitual discipline of Lacedæmonian soldiers to make them obey this order of the Spartan king, alike unexpected and unwelcome.[104] For the army were fully sensible both of the prodigious advantages of their position, and of the overwhelming strength of the invading force, so that all the three divisions were loud in their denunciations of Agis, and penetrated with shame at the thoughts of so disgraceful a retreat. And when they all saw themselves in one united body at Nemea, previous to breaking up and going home,—so as to have before their eyes their own full numbers and the complete equipment of one of the finest Hellenic armies which had ever been assembled,—the Argeian body of allies, before whom they were now retiring, appeared contemptible in the comparison, and they separated with yet warmer