is, their Lacedaemonian commander, being among the slain. Thus the
winter ended and the twelfth year of this war ended also. After the
battle, Heraclea was so terribly reduced that in the first days of the
summer following the Boeotians occupied the place and sent away the
Lacedaemonian Agesippidas for misgovernment, fearing that the town might
be taken by the Athenians while the Lacedaemonians were distracted
with the affairs of Peloponnese. The Lacedaemonians, nevertheless, were
offended with them for what they had done.

The same summer Alcibiades, son of Clinias, now one of the generals
at Athens, in concert with the Argives and the allies, went into
Peloponnese with a few Athenian heavy infantry and archers and some of
the allies in those parts whom he took up as he passed, and with this
army marched here and there through Peloponnese, and settled various
matters connected with the alliance, and among other things induced the
Patrians to carry their walls down to the sea, intending himself also
to build a fort near the Achaean Rhium. However, the Corinthians and
Sicyonians, and all others who would have suffered by its being built,
came up and hindered him.

The same summer war broke out between the Epidaurians and Argives. The
pretext was that the Epidaurians did not send an offering for their
pasture-land to Apollo Pythaeus, as they were bound to do, the Argives
having the chief management of the temple; but, apart from this pretext,
Alcibiades and the Argives were determined, if possible, to gain
possession of Epidaurus, and thus to ensure the neutrality of Corinth
and give the Athenians a shorter passage for their reinforcements from
Aegina than if they had to sail round Scyllaeum. The Argives accordingly
prepared to invade Epidaurus by themselves, to exact the offering.

About the same time the Lacedaemonians marched out with all their people
to Leuctra upon their frontier, opposite to Mount Lycaeum, under the
command of Agis, son of Archidamus, without any one knowing their
destination, not even the cities that sent the contingents. The
sacrifices, however, for crossing the frontier not proving propitious,
the Lacedaemonians returned home themselves, and sent word to the allies
to be ready to march after the month ensuing, which happened to be the
month of Carneus, a holy time for the Dorians. Upon the retreat of the
Lacedaemonians the Argives marched out on the last day but three of the
month before Carneu