them, suddenly broke and fled in the direction of home,
and thus compelled Perdiccas, who at first did not perceive what had
occurred, to depart without seeing Brasidas, the two armies being
encamped at a considerable distance from each other. At daybreak
Brasidas, perceiving that the Macedonians had gone on, and that the
Illyrians and Arrhabaeus were on the point of attacking him, formed his
heavy infantry into a square, with the light troops in the centre, and
himself also prepared to retreat. Posting his youngest soldiers to dash
out wherever the enemy should attack them, he himself with three hundred
picked men in the rear intended to face about during the retreat and
beat off the most forward of their assailants, Meanwhile, before the
enemy approached, he sought to sustain the courage of his soldiers with
the following hasty exhortation:

"Peloponnesians, if I did not suspect you of being dismayed at being
left alone to sustain the attack of a numerous and barbarian enemy,
I should just have said a few words to you as usual without further
explanation. As it is, in the face of the desertion of our friends and
the numbers of the enemy, I have some advice and information to offer,
which, brief as they must be, will, I hope, suffice for the more
important points. The bravery that you habitually display in war does
not depend on your having allies at your side in this or that encounter,
but on your native courage; nor have numbers any terrors for citizens of
states like yours, in which the many do not rule the few, but rather the
few the many, owing their position to nothing else than to superiority
in the field. Inexperience now makes you afraid of barbarians; and yet
the trial of strength which you had with the Macedonians among them, and
my own judgment, confirmed by what I hear from others, should be enough
to satisfy you that they will not prove formidable. Where an enemy
seems strong but is really weak, a true knowledge of the facts makes his
adversary the bolder, just as a serious antagonist is encountered most
confidently by those who do not know him. Thus the present enemy might
terrify an inexperienced imagination; they are formidable in outward
bulk, their loud yelling is unbearable, and the brandishing of their
weapons in the air has a threatening appearance. But when it comes to
real fighting with an opponent who stands his ground, they are not what
they seemed; they have no regular order that they should b