Description of Greece

​At that time, Epaminondas offered sacrifices to Scedasus and his daughters and prayed, on the ground that the contest would be not so much for the safety of the Thebans as for the avenging of those women. The opinions of the Boeotarchs, however, were not the same, but differed widely from one another; for Epaminondas, Malgis, and Xenocrates favored joining battle with the Lacedaemonians as quickly as possible, while Damocleidas, Damophilus, and Simangelus would not allow them to engage, but urged them to deposit their wives and children safely in Attica and to prepare themselves as if they were going to be besieged.

​Thus the plans of these six were divided to this extent; but when the vote of the seventh of the Boeotarchs was added to those of Epaminondas’ party—who had been guarding the pass by Cithaeron, and whose name was Brachyllides—when this man returned to the camp and threw in his lot with those of Epaminondas’ party, then it was decided by all to decide the issue by battle.

​But Epaminondas suspected some of the other Boeotians too, and the Thespians still more; fearing, therefore, lest they should betray them in the action, he gave permission to leave the camp to any who wished to go home; and so the Thespians departed with all their forces, and any other Boeotians who harbored ill-will against the Thebans.

​And when they came to close quarters, there the allies of the Lacedaemonians, being dissatisfied with them even in the time before, showed their hatred in the highest degree, refusing to stand their ground, but giving way wherever the enemy attacked them. But the Lacedaemonians themselves and the Thebans were brought to an equal footing: the former by their pre-existing experience and at the same time by their sense of shame lest they should destroy the prestige of Sparta, while the Thebans saw the danger standing over them for their country, and on behalf of their wives and children.

​But when other Lacedaemonian officials and the king, Cleombrotus, had fallen, then a necessity seized the Spartans, hard-pressed though they were, not to give way; for among the Lacedaemonians it was deemed most shameful to allow the body of a king to fall into the hands of enemy men.

​The victory had been achieved by the Thebans in the most glorious manner of all victories which Greeks ever won over Greeks. On the next day the Lacedaemonians intended to bury their dead and sent a herald to the Thebans. But Epaminondas, knowing that the Lacedaemonians were always by nature inclined to conceal their disasters, said that he would permit their allies to take up their dead first, and only after they had taken them up did he expect the Lacedaemonians to bury their own.

​When, therefore, some of the allies did not even begin to take up any, since none of them had fallen, and for others the loss was shown to be small, so the Lacedaemonians buried their own dead, and it was thus proved that those who lay there were Spartans. There fell of the Thebans and of those Boeotians who remained with them forty-seven men, but of the Lacedaemonians themselves more than a thousand.