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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.
Over the sand they flew, moving by quick leaps, their shining arms flashing to and fro in fair rhythm. Twice around the stadium led the race, so no one strained at first. For a while the three clung together, until near the lower goal the Mantinean heedlessly risked a dash. His foot slipped on the sands. He recovered; but like arrows his rivals passed him. At the goal the inevitable happened.
“A safe promise,” interrupted a Spartan in broadest Doric; “the pretty boy has no chance against Lycon, our Laconian giant.” “Boaster!” retorted an Athenian. “Did not Glaucon bend open a horseshoe yesterday?” “Our Mœrocles did that,” called a Mantinean; whereupon the crier, foregoing his long speech on Glaucon’s noble ancestry, began to urge the Athenians to show their confidence by their wagers.
Lycon, with the shorter turn, swung quickest. He went up the homeward track ahead, the Athenian an elbow’s length behind. The stadium seemed dissolving in a tumult. Men rose; threw garments in the air; stretched out their arms; besought the gods; screamed to the runners. “Speed, son of Conon, speed!” “Glory to Castor; Sparta is prevailing!” “Strive, Mantinean,—still a chance!”
Looked at by the light of facts it cannot, it will be found, be rationally considered a state of peace, where neither party either gave or got back all that they had agreed, apart from the violations of it which occurred on both sides in the Mantinean and Epidaurian wars and other instances, and the fact that the allies in the direction of Thrace were in as open hostility as ever, while the Boeotians had only a truce renewed every ten days.
But when they perceived that all the sea-men designed for Sicily were for him, and the soldiers also, and when the Argive and Mantinean auxiliaries, a thousand men at arms, openly declared that they had undertaken this distant maritime expedition for the sake of Alcibiades, and that, if he was ill-used, they would all go home, they recovered their courage, and became eager to make use of the present opportunity for justifying him.
“Win the turn, dear Athenian, the turn, and leave that Cyclops behind!” But at the upper turn Lycon still held advantage, and down the other track went the twain, even as Odysseus ran behind Ajax, “who trod in Ajax’ footsteps ere ever the dust had settled, while on his head fell the breath of him behind.” Again at the lower goal the Mantinean was panting wearily in the rear.
The remainder of the hoplites were furnished by the allies, mostly by the subject states; but five hundred came from Argos, besides two hundred and fifty Mantinean and other mercenaries. The archers were in all four hundred and eighty, of whom eighty were Cretans.
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