Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/373

DESTRUCTION OF THE MORA. 351 The horseman who first communicated the disaster to Agesilaus, had started off express immediately from Lechaeum, even before the bodies of the slain had been picked up for burial. The hur- ried movement of Agesilaus had been dictated by the desire of reaching the field in time to contend for the possession of the bodies, and to escape the shame of soliciting the burial-truce. But the three horsemen who met him afterwards, arrested his course by informing him that the bodies had already been buried, under truce asked and obtained ; which authorized Iphikrates to erect his well- earned trophy on the spot where he had first made the attack. 1 Such a destruction of an entire division of Lacedaemonian hop lites, by light troops who stood in awe of them and whom they despised, was an incident, not indeed of great political importance, but striking in respect of military effect and impression upon the Grecian mind. Nothing at all like it had occurred since the memorable capture of Sphakteria, thirty-five years before ; a disas- ter less considerable in one respect, that the number of hoplites beaten was inferior by one-third, but far more important in another respect, that half the division had surrendered as prison- ers ; whereas in the battle near Corinth, though the whole mora (except a few fugitives) perished, it does not seem that a single prisoner was taken. Upon the Corinthians, Breotians, and other enemies of Sparta, the event operated as a joyous encouragement, reviving them out of all their previous despondency. Even by the allies of Sparta, jealous of her superiority and bound to her by fear more than by attachment, it was welcomed with ill-suppressed satisfaction. But upon the army of Agesilaus (and doubtless upon the Lacedaemonians at home) it fell like a sudden thunderbolt, causing the strongest manifestations of sorrow and roneous ; either the original aggregate of six hundred is above the truth, or the total of slain, two hundred and fifty, is below the truth. Now the latter supposition appears to me by far the more probable of the two. The Lacedaemonians, habitually secret and misleading in their returns of their own numbers (see Thucyd. v, 74), probably did not choose to admit publicly a greater total of slain than two hundred and fifty. Xenophon has inserted this in his history, forgetting that his own details of the battle refuted the numerical statement. The total of six hundred is more probable, than any smaller number, for the entire mora ; and it is impossible to assign any rea sons why Xenophon should overstate it. Xen. Hellen. iv, 5, 8-10.