Book 7
5.17
And by engaging in the battle they did indeed prove the means of saving for the Mantineans everything that was outside the wall, but there fell brave men among them; and those also whom they slew were manifestly of a like sort; for neither side had any weapon so short that they did not reach one another therewith. And the Athenians did not abandon their own dead, and they gave back some of the enemy’s under a truce.
5.18
As for Epaminondas, on the other hand, when he considered that within a few days it would be necessary for him to depart, because the time fixed Apparently either by the Theban government or by agreement with the allies. for the campaign had expired, and that if he should leave behind him unprotected the people to whom he had come as an ally, they would be besieged by their adversaries, while he himself would have completely tarnished his own reputation, — for with a large force of hoplites he had been defeated at Lacedaemon by a few, and defeated likewise in a cavalry battle at Mantinea, and through his expedition to Peloponnesus had made himself the cause of the union of the Lacedaemonians, the Arcadians, the Achaeans, the Eleans, and the Athenians, — he thought for these reasons that it was not possible for him to pass by the enemy without a battle, since he reasoned that if he were victorious, he would make up for all these things, while if he were slain, he deemed that such an end would be honourable for one who was striving to leave to his fatherland dominion over Peloponnesus.
5.19
Now the fact that Epaminondas himself entertained such thoughts,362 B.C. seems to me to be in no wise remarkable, — for such thoughts are natural to ambitious men; but that he had brought his army to such a point that the troops flinched from no toil, whether by night or by day, and shrank from no peril, and although the provisions they had were scanty, were nevertheless willing to be obedient, this seems to me to be more remarkable.
