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In this, perhaps the most difficult, as the most essential, task, Themistocles was aided by a Tegean, named Chileus, who, though he rarely appears upon the external stage of action, seems to have been eminently skilled in the intricate and entangled politics of the time.
Meanwhile Agis, whether in consequence of this halloo or of some sudden new idea of his own, quickly led back his army without engaging, and entering the Tegean territory, began to turn off into that of Mantinea the water about which the Mantineans and Tegeans are always fighting, on account of the extensive damage it does to whichever of the two countries it falls into.
The Spartans knelt behind their shields, but the arrows pierced them, and the bravest men died sorrowfully, lamenting not for death, but because they died without striking a blow for Sparta. In his distress Pausanias called upon the goddess Hera, and the omens suddenly became favorable, and the Spartans with their Tegean allies threw themselves upon the enemy.
The army of the Argives and their allies, having given way in this quarter, was now completely cut in two, and the Lacedaemonian and Tegean right simultaneously closing round the Athenians with the troops that outflanked them, these last found themselves placed between two fires, being surrounded on one side and already defeated on the other.
The two armies—the whole strength of the Barbarian, the Spartans with only their Tegean allies—stood facing, as athletes measuring strength before the grapple. The Spartan line was thinner than Mardonius’s: no cavalry, few bowmen, but shield was set beside shield, and everywhere tossed the black and scarlet plumes of the helmets. Men who remembered Thermopylæ gripped their spear-stocks tighter.
Euboulus would tell in Athens, in all Hellas, how he had remained with Leonidas and maintained Athenian honour when Corinthian and Tegean turned away. From “Glaucon the Traitor” he would be raised to “Glaucon the Hero.” Hermione, Democrates, and all others he loved would flush with pride and no more with shame when men spoke of him.
At the end of the same summer the Corinthian Aristeus, Aneristus, Nicolaus, and Stratodemus, envoys from Lacedaemon, Timagoras, a Tegean, and a private individual named Pollis from Argos, on their way to Asia to persuade the King to supply funds and join in the war, came to Sitalces, son of Teres in Thrace, with the idea of inducing him, if possible, to forsake the alliance of Athens and to march on Potidaea then besieged by an Athenian force, and also of getting conveyed by his means to their destination across the Hellespont to Pharnabazus, who was to send them up the country to the King.
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