There could hardly be a more fatal blow to Sparta than this loss to herself, and transfer to her enemies, of Tegea, the most powerful of her remaining allies.[448] To assist the exiles and avenge Stasippus, as well as to arrest the Arcadian movement, she resolved on a march into the country, in spite of her present dispirited condition; while Heræa and Lepreum, but no other places, sent contingents to her aid. From Elis and Argos, on the other hand, reinforcements came to Mantinea and Tegea. Proclaiming that the Mantineans had violated the recent peace by their entry into Tegea, Agesilaus marched across the border against them. The first Arcadian town which he reached was Eutæa,[449] where he found that all the male adults had gone to the great Arcadian assembly. Though the feebler population, remaining behind, were completely in his power, he took scrupulous care to respect both person and property, and even lent aid to rebuild a decayed portion of the wall. At Eutæa he halted a day or two, thinking it prudent to wait for the junction of the mercenary force and the Bœotian exiles under Polytropus, now at Orchomenus. Against the latter place, however, the Mantineans had marched under Lykomêdes, while Polytropus, coming forth from the walls to meet them, had been defeated with loss, and slain.[450] Hence Agesilaus was compelled to advance onward with his own unassisted forces, through the territory of Tegea up to the neighborhood of Mantinea. His onward march left the way from Asea to Tegea free, upon which the Arcadians assembled at Asea broke up, and marched by night to Tegea; from whence, on the next day, they proceeded to Mantinea, along the mountain range eastward of the Tegeatic plain; so that the whole Arcadian force thus became united. Agesilaus on his side, having ravaged the fields and encamped within little more than two miles from the walls of Mantinea, was agreeably surprised by the junction of his allies from Orchomenus, who had eluded by a night-march the vigilance of the enemy. Both on one side and on the other, the forces were thus concentrated. Agesilaus found himself on the first night, without intending it, embosomed in a recess of the mountains near Mantinea, where the Mantineans gathered on the high ground around, in order to attack him from above, the next morning. By a well-managed retreat, he extricated himself from this inconvenient position, and regained the plain; where he remained three days, prepared to give battle if the enemy came forth, in order that he might “not seem (says Xenophon) to hasten his departure through fear.”[451] As the enemy kept within their walls, he marched homeward, on the fourth day, to his former camp in the Tegean territory. The enemy did not pursue, and he then pushed on his march, though it was late in the evening, to Eutæa; “wishing (says Xenophon) to get his troops off before even the enemies’ fires could be seen, in order that no one might say that his return was a flight. He