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Meanwhile Hippocrates at Delium, informed of the approach of the Boeotians, sent orders to his troops to throw themselves into line, and himself joined them not long afterwards, leaving about three hundred horse behind him at Delium, at once to guard the place in case of attack, and to watch their opportunity and fall upon the Boeotians during the battle.
They served as soldiers together at Potidæa, lodged in the same tent, and stood side by side in the ranks. Alcibiades was wounded in the battle, but was defended and rescued by his friend, who afterwards persuaded the generals to award to him the prize for valor. Later, at the battle of Delium, Alcibiades protected and saved Socrates.
Athens had suffered severely at Delium, and again shortly afterwards at Amphipolis, and had no longer that confidence in her strength which had made her before refuse to treat, in the belief of ultimate victory which her success at the moment had inspired; besides, she was afraid of her allies being tempted by her reverses to rebel more generally, and repented having let go the splendid opportunity for peace which the affair of Pylos had offered.
We catch glimpse of him as a soldier: from 432 to 429 he served at the siege of Potidaea; at Delium in 424; and at Amphipolis in 422. Thus to do the hoplite, carrying a great weight of arms, at forty-seven, he needed to have some constitution; and indeed he had; furthermore, he played the part with distinguished bravery though wont to fall at times into inconvenient fits of abstraction.
The boundary alludes to the country near Delium, which is on the borders of Attica and Bœotia, and the Orchalian hill, which is now called Fox-hill, lies in the territory of Haliartus, on the side nearest Mount Helikon.
His good fortune was indeed shown in many remarkable instances: for example, he never was present at any of the great defeats sustained by the Athenians at that time, as in Thrace they were defeated by the Greeks of Chalkidike, but on that occasion Kalliades and Xenophon were acting as generals, while the defeat in Ætolia took place when Demosthenes was in command, and at Delium, where a thousand men were slain, they were led by Hippokrates.
Night however coming on to interrupt the pursuit, the mass of the fugitives escaped more easily than they would otherwise have done. The next day the troops at Oropus and Delium returned home by sea, after leaving a garrison in the latter place, which they continued to hold notwithstanding the defeat.
But their good fortune had now reached its culminatiug point. They were defeated by the Boeotians with great loss at the battle of Delium, which was the greatest and most decisive engagement fought during the first period of the war an interesting feature of the battle is that both Socrates and his pupil Alcibiades were engaged in it, the former among the hoplites, the latter in the cavalry.
At Delium, they lost a thousand citizens under the conduct of Hippocrates; the plague was principally laid to the charge of Pericles, he, to carry on the war, having shut up close together in the town the crowd of people from the country, who, by the change of place, and of their usual course of living, bred the pestilence.
They had with them Mictio, who had been sent from Chalcis to Quinctius, deputed to solicit that very reinforcement; and when he perceived that the passes were blocked up by the enemy, he quitted the road to Aulis, and turned away to Delium, with intent to pass over thence to Euboea.
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