ponsible for this is
the first upon the right wing, who is always striving to withdraw from
the enemy his unarmed side; and the same apprehension makes the rest
follow him. On the present occasion the Mantineans reached with their
wing far beyond the Sciritae, and the Lacedaemonians and Tegeans still
farther beyond the Athenians, as their army was the largest. Agis,
afraid of his left being surrounded, and thinking that the Mantineans
outflanked it too far, ordered the Sciritae and Brasideans to move
out from their place in the ranks and make the line even with the
Mantineans, and told the Polemarchs Hipponoidas and Aristocles to
fill up the gap thus formed, by throwing themselves into it with two
companies taken from the right wing; thinking that his right would still
be strong enough and to spare, and that the line fronting the Mantineans
would gain in solidity.

However, as he gave these orders in the moment of the onset, and at
short notice, it so happened that Aristocles and Hipponoidas would not
move over, for which offence they were afterwards banished from Sparta,
as having been guilty of cowardice; and the enemy meanwhile closed
before the Sciritae (whom Agis on seeing that the two companies did
not move over ordered to return to their place) had time to fill up
the breach in question. Now it was, however, that the Lacedaemonians,
utterly worsted in respect of skill, showed themselves as superior in
point of courage. As soon as they came to close quarters with the enemy,
the Mantinean right broke their Sciritae and Brasideans, and, bursting
in with their allies and the thousand picked Argives into the unclosed
breach in their line, cut up and surrounded the Lacedaemonians, and
drove them in full rout to the wagons, slaying some of the older men on
guard there. But the Lacedaemonians, worsted in this part of the field,
with the rest of their army, and especially the centre, where the three
hundred knights, as they are called, fought round King Agis, fell on
the older men of the Argives and the five companies so named, and on
the Cleonaeans, the Orneans, and the Athenians next them, and instantly
routed them; the greater number not even waiting to strike a blow, but
giving way the moment that they came on, some even being trodden under
foot, in their fear of being overtaken by their assailants.

The army of the Argives and their allies, having given way in this
quarter, was now completely cut in two, and the Lac