Beyond this very slender information, there seems no other fact certainly established about the Lacedæmonian military distribution. Nor ought we reasonably to expect to find that these words _enômoty_, _pentekosty_, lochus, etc., indicate any fixed number of men: our own names _regiment_, _company_, _troop_, _brigade_, _division_, etc., are all more or less indefinite as to positive numbers and proportion to each other. That which was peculiar to the Lacedæmonian drill, was, the teaching a small number of men like an enômoty (twenty-five, thirty-two, thirty-six men, as we sometimes find it), to perform its evolutions under the command of its enômotarch. When this was once secured, it is probable that the combination of these elementary divisions was left to be determined in every case by circumstances. Thucydidês states two distinct facts. 1. Each enômoty had _four men in front_. 2. Each enômoty _varied in depth_, according as every lochagus chose. Now Dobree asks, with much reason, how these two assertions are to be reconciled? Given the number of men in front, the depth of the enômoty is of course determined, without any reference to the discretion of any one. These two assertions appear distinctly contradictory; unless we suppose (what seems very difficult to believe) that the lochage might make one or two of the four files of the same enômoty deeper than the rest. Dobree proposes, as a means of removing this difficulty, to expunge some words from the text. One cannot have confidence, however, in the conjecture. 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.