Hide browse bar Your current position in the text is marked in blue. Click anywhere in the line to jump to another position:
book:
chapter:
Contents of the Fifteenth Book of Diodorus
chapter 1chapter 2chapter 3chapter 4chapter 5chapter 6chapter 7chapter 8chapter 9chapter 10chapter 11chapter 12chapter 13chapter 14chapter 15chapter 16chapter 17chapter 18chapter 19chapter 20chapter 21chapter 22chapter 23chapter 24chapter 25chapter 26chapter 27chapter 28chapter 29chapter 30chapter 31chapter 32chapter 33chapter 34chapter 35chapter 36chapter 37chapter 38chapter 39chapter 40chapter 41chapter 42chapter 43chapter 44chapter 45chapter 46chapter 47chapter 48chapter 49chapter 50chapter 51chapter 52chapter 53chapter 54chapter 55chapter 56chapter 57chapter 58chapter 59chapter 60chapter 61chapter 62chapter 63chapter 64chapter 65chapter 66chapter 67chapter 68chapter 69chapter 70chapter 71chapter 72chapter 73chapter 74chapter 75chapter 76chapter 77chapter 78chapter 79chapter 80chapter 81chapter 82chapter 83chapter 84chapter 85chapter 86chapter 87chapter 88chapter 89chapter 90chapter 91chapter 92chapter 93chapter 94chapter 95
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
As for the Lacedaemonians, since they had cast away many of
their young men in the disaster at Leuctra and in their other defeats had lost not a few, and
were, taking all together, restricted by the blows of fortune to but few citizen soldiers, and,
furthermore, since some of their allies had seceded and others were experiencing a shortage of
men for reasons similar to their own, they sank into a state of great weakness. Hence they were
compelled to have recourse to the aid of the Athenians, the very people over whom they had once
set up thirty tyrants,1 whom they had forbidden to rebuild the walls of their city, whose city they
had aimed utterly to destroy, and whose territory, Attica, they wished to turn into a
sheepwalk.
[2]
Yet, after all, nothing is stronger than necessity
and fate, which compelled the Lacedaemonians to request the aid of their bitterest enemies.
Nevertheless they were not disappointed of their hopes. For the Athenian people, magnanimous
and generous, were not terrified by the power of Thebes, and voted to aid with all their forces
the Lacedaemonians now that they were in danger of enslavement. Immediately they appointed
Iphicrates general and dispatched him with twelve thousand young men the self-same day.2 Iphicrates, then, whose men were in high
spirits, advanced with the army at top speed.
[3]
Meanwhile the
Lacedaemonians, as the enemy took up quarters on the borders of Laconia, issued in full force
from Sparta and marched on to meet them, weakened in military force but strong in inward
courage.
[4]
Now Epameinondas and the others, perceiving that the
country of the Lacedaemonians was difficult to invade, thought it not to their advantage to
make the invasion with such a large force in a body, and so decided to divide their army into
four columns and enter at several points.3
1 The Thirty were instituted as the governing board at Athens by Lysander after the capture of the city (404 B.C.) following the defeat of Aegospotami. Though Sparta's allies wished to destroy Athens utterly, Sparta herself would not allow such drastic punishment, but did demand the dismantling of the walls, which were torn down by the Athenian populace to the accompaniment of flute music. Though forbidden to rebuild, when, after the victory of Cnidus (394 B.C.), Conon returned to Athens, the people once again built the walls.
2 See Xen. Hell. 6.5.33-49. Diodorus brings in too soon the dispatch of Iphicrates and his army. It belongs to the spring of 369, after the campaign in Laconia.
3 The best account of this invasion is in Xen. Hell. 6.5.22-32. See also Pausanias 9.14; Plut. Pelopidas 24, Plut. Agesilaus 31-32; Polyaenus 2.1.14, 15, 27, 29; Nepos Agesilaus 6; Aelian Var. Hist. 14.27. The invasion of Laconia belongs to the winter 370/69.
Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.
show
Browse Bar
hide
Places (automatically extracted)
View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.
Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.
hide
Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates
alphabetically,
as they appear on the page,
by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
404 BC (1)Click on a date to search for it in this document.
394 BC (1)
hide
References (10 total)
- Cross-references to this page
(1):
- Smith's Bio, Ocellus
- Cross-references in notes from this page (7):
- Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page
(2):
- LSJ, ὀλι^γ-ανδρέω
- LSJ, συγ-κλείω
hide
Search
hideStable Identifiers
hide
Display Preferences