for permission to carry away the dead. This proposal greatly shocked
the older Spartans, who could not refrain from going to the king and
imploring him not to receive back Lysander's corpse by a truce[159]
which was in itself a confession of defeat, but to let them fight for
his body and either bury it as victors, or else to share their
general's fate as became them. However, in spite of these
representations, Pausanias, perceiving that it would be no easy task
to overcome the Thebans, flushed as they were with the victory of the
day before, and that, as Lysander's body lay close under the walls of
the town, it would be almost impossible, even if they were victorious,
to recover it otherwise than by treaty, sent a herald, obtained the
necessary truce, and led away his forces. As soon as the Spartans
crossed the Boeotian frontier they buried the body of Lysander in the
territory of the friendly and allied city of Panope, in Phokis, where
at the present day his monument stands by the side of the road from
Chaeronea to Delphi.[160] It is said that while the army was encamped
there one of the Phokians, while describing the battle to another who
had not been present, said that the enemy fell upon them just after
Lysander had crossed the Hoplites.[161] A Spartan who was present was
surprised at this word, and enquired of Lysander's friend, what he
meant by the Hoplites, for he did not understand it. "It was where,"
answered he, "the enemy overthrew our front ranks; for they call the
stream which runs past the city the Hoplites." On hearing these words
the Spartan burst into tears, and exclaimed, "How impossible is it for
a man to escape his fate:"--for it seems Lysander had received an
oracular warning in these words:

"I warn thee, shun Hoplites roaring track.
And th' earth-born snake that stings behind thy back."

Some say that the Hoplites does not run by Haliartus, but that it is
the name of a torrent which joins the river Philarus near Koronea,
which used to be called the Hoplias, and is now called Isomantus. The
man who killed Lysander was a citizen of Haliartus named Neochorus,
who bore a snake as the device upon his shield, which it is supposed
was alluded to by the oracle.

We are also told that during the Peloponnesian war the Thebans
received an oracle from Apollo Ismenius, referring immediately to the
battle of Delium, and also to this battle at Haliartus, which took
place thirty years afterwards. It r