on; but failing by such means to induce them to
raze their walls, he proceeded to draw lines of circumvallation round
the city, keeping half his troops under arms to screen the entrenching
parties whilst the other half pushed on the work with the spade. As soon
as the trench was completed, he experienced no further difficulty in
building a wall round the city. Aware, however, of the existence of a
huge supply of corn inside the town, the result of the bountiful harvest
of the preceding year, and averse to the notion of wearing out the city
of Lacedaemon and her allies by tedious campaigning, he hit upon the
expedient of damming up the river which flowed through the town.

It was a stream of no inconsiderable size. (8) By erecting a barrier at
its exit from the town he caused the water to rise above the basements
of the private dwellings and the foundations of the fortification walls.
Then, as the lower layers of bricks became saturated and refused their
support to the rows above, the wall began to crack and soon to totter
to its fall. The citizens for some time tried to prop it with pieces
of timber, and used other devices to avert the imminent ruin of their
tower; but finding themselves overmatched by the water, and in dread
lest the fall at some point or other of the circular wall (9) might
deliver them captive to the spear of the enemy, they signified their
consent to raze their walls. But the Lacedaemonians now steadily refused
any form of truce, except on the further condition that the Mantineans
would suffer themselves to be broken up and distributed into villages.
They, looking the necessity in the face, consented to do even that. The
sympathisers with Argos among them, and the leaders of their democracy,
thought their fate was sealed. Then the father treated with the son,
Pausanias with Agesipolis, on their behalf, and obtained immunity for
them--sixty in number--on condition that they should quit the city. The
Lacedaemonian troops stood lining the road on both sides, beginning
from the gates, and watched the outgoers; and with their spears in
their hands, in spite of bitter hatred, kept aloof from them with less
difficulty than the Mantineans of the better classes themselves--a
weighty testimony to the power of Spartan discipline, be it said. In
conclusion, the wall was razed, and Mantinea split up into four parts,
(10) assuming once again its primitive condition as regards inhabitants.
The first feeling was one