The Theban general, Epaminondas, marched in the same order of battle in which he intended to fight, that he might not be obliged, when he came up with the enemy, to lose, in the disposition of his army, a time which cannot be too much saved in great enterprises[346]. He did not march directly, and with his front to the enemy, but in a column upon the hills, with his left wing foremost, as if he did not intend to fight that day. When he was over against them at a quarter of a league's distance, he made his troops halt and lay down their arms, as if he designed to encamp there. The enemy in effect were deceived by that stand; and reckoning no longer upon a battle, they quitted their arms, dispersed themselves about the camp, and suffered that ardour to extinguish, which the near approach of a battle is wont to kindle in the hearts of the soldiers. Epaminondas, however, by suddenly wheeling his troops to the right, having changed his column into a line, and having drawn out the choicest troops, whom he had expressly posted in front upon his march, he made them double their files upon the front of his left wing, to add to its strength, and to put it into a condition to attack in a point the Lacedæmonian phalanx, which, by the movement he had made, faced it directly. He expected to decide the victory by that body of chosen troops which he commanded in person, and which he had formed in a column to attack the enemy in a point like a galley, says Xenophon. He assured himself, that if he could penetrate the Lacedæmonian phalanx, in which the enemy's principal force consisted, he should not find it difficult to rout the rest of their army, by charging upon the right and left. After having disposed his whole army in this manner, he moved on to charge the enemy with the whole weight of his column. They were strangely surprised when they saw Epaminondas advance towards them in this order, and resumed their arms, bridled their horses, and made all the haste they could to their ranks. Whilst Epaminondas marched against the enemy, the cavalry that covered his flank on the left, the best at that time in Greece, entirely composed of Thebans and Thessalians, had orders to attack the enemy's horse. The Theban general, whom nothing escaped, had artfully bestowed bowmen, slingers and dartmen, in the intervals of his horse, in order to begin the disorder of the enemy's cavalry, by a previous discharge of a shower of arrows, stones, and javelins, upon them. The other army had neglected to take the same precaution, and had made another fault, not less considerable, in giving as much depth to the squadrons as if they had been a phalanx. By this means their horse were incapable of supporting long the charge of the Thebans. After having made several ineffectual attacks with great loss, they were obliged to retire behind their infantry.