History of Rome

​Nabis, being both elated by his success and having gained a doubtless hope that there would no longer be any danger from the sea, wished also to close the land approaches by opportunely posted garrisons.

​Having withdrawn a third part of his forces from the siege of Gytheum, he pitched his camp at Pleiae.

​This place overlooks both Leucae and Acriae, by which route the enemy seemed likely to advance their army. Since there was a permanent station there and few had tents, and the rest of the multitude had built huts woven of reeds and covered with foliage, which would merely provide shade, ​before he should come into the sight of the enemy, Philopoemen determined to attack him while off his guard by an unexpected kind of war .

​He collected small vessels into a hidden anchorage of the Argive territory; in them he embarked light-armed soldiers, most of them targeteers, with slings and javelins and other light kinds of armor.

​Sailing from there along the coast, when he had come to a promontory near the enemy’s camp, he landed and, proceeding by well-known paths at night, reached Pleiae; and, while the sentinels were asleep as if there were no danger near, he threw fire into the huts from every part of the camp.

​Many were consumed by the fire before they perceived the arrival of the enemy, and those who did perceive it ​could bring no help. All things were consumed by fire and sword; very few escaped from so critical a disaster to the larger camp at Gytheum.

​Having thus dismayed the enemy, Philopoemen marched immediately to plunder Tripolis of the Laconian territory, ​which is nearest to the territory of the Megalopolitans, and, having carried off a great quantity of cattle and men from there, he departed before the tyrant could send a garrison to the fields from Gytheum. ​From there, having assembled his army at Tegea, and having summoned a council to the same place, both of the Achaeans and their allies, ​in which there were also chiefs of the Epirotes and Acarnanians, he determined, since the spirits of his own men were sufficiently recovered from the shame of the naval disgrace, and those of the enemy were terrified, to march to Lacedaemon, thinking that by this way alone the enemy could be drawn away from the siege of Gytheum.

​He first pitched his camp at Caryae in the enemy’s land. On that very day Gytheum was taken by storm.

​Philopoemen, ignorant of this event, advanced his camp to Barnosthenes — a mountain ten miles from Lacedaemon. And Nabis, having recovered Gytheum and set out from there with a light-armed army, when he had marched rapidly past Lacedaemon, occupied what they call the Camp of Pyrrhus, which place he did not doubt was aimed at by the Achaeans.

​From there he went to meet the enemy. Moreover, they were holding a line of nearly five miles in a long column because of the narrowness of the road; the rear of the column was closed by the cavalry and the greatest part of the auxiliaries, because Philopoemen expected that the tyrant, with the mercenary soldiers in whom he most trusted, would attack his men from behind.

​Two unexpected things at the same time struck him with dismay: one, that the place he was aiming at was pre-occupied; the other, because he saw that the enemy had met the head of his column, where, as the march was through rugged places, he did not see that the standards could be advanced without the protection of light-armed troops.