Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/333

AGESILAUS IN PHOKIS. 311 I try, Larissa, Krannon, and other cities in alliance with Thebes, raised opposition to bar his passage. But in the disunited condi- tion of this country, no systematic resistance could be organized against him. Nothing more appeared than detached bodies of cavalry, whom he beat and dispersed, with the death of Polychar- mus, their leader. As the Thessalian cavalry, however, was the best in Greece, he took great pride in having defeated them with cavalry disciplined by himself in Asia ; backed, however, it must be observed, by skilful and effective support from his hoplites. 1 After having passed the Achaean mountains or the line of Mount Othrys, he marched the rest of the way without opposition, through the strait of Thermopylae to the frontier of Phokis and Boeotia. In this latter part of his march, Agesilaus was met by the ephor Diphridas in person, who urged him to hasten his march as much as possible, and attack the Breotians. He was further joined by two Lacedaemonian regiments 2 from Corinth, and by fifty young Spartan volunteers as a body-guard, who crossed by sea from Si- kyon. He was reinforced also by the Phokians and the Orcho- menians, in addition to the Peloponnesian troops who had accompanied him to Asia, the Asiatic hoplites, the Cyreians, the peltasts, and the cavalry, whom he had brought with him from the Hellespont, and some fresh troops collected in the march. His army was thus in imposing force when he reached the neighbor- hood of Chasroneia on the Boeotian border. It was here that they were alarmed by an eclipse of the sun, on the fourteenth of August, 394 B. c. ; a fatal presage, the meaning of which was soon inter- preted for them by the arrival of a messenger bearing news of the naval defeat of Knidus, with the death of Peisander, brother-in- law of Agesilaus. Deeply was the latter affected by this irrepara- ble blow. He foresaw that, when known, it would spread dismay and dejection among his soldiers, most of whom would remain at- tached to him only so long as they believed the cause of Sparta 1 Xen. Hellen. iv, 2, 4-9 ; Diodor. xiv, 83. 2 Plutarch (Agesil. c. 17; compare also Plutarch, Apophth. p. 795, as corrected by Moras ad Xen. Hellen. iv, 3, 15) states two morse or regiments as having joined Agesilaus from Corinth ; Xenophon alludes only to one, besides that mora which was in garrison at Orcromenus (Hellei? iv, 3, It Agesil. ii, 6).