eir side, perceiving the discomfiture of the
Sicyonians, sprang out with timely aid, keeping the palisade-work on
their left. But the Argives, discovering that the Lacedaemonians were
behind them, wheeled round and came racing back, pouring out of the
palisade at full speed. Their extreme right, with unprotected flanks
exposed, fell victims to the Lacedaemonians; the rest, hugging the wall,
made good their retreat in dense masses towards the city. Here they
encountered the Corinthian exiles, and discovering that they had fallen
upon foes, swerved aside in the reverse direction. In this predicament
some mounted by the ladders of the city wall, and, leaping down from
its summit, were destroyed; (10) others yielded up their lives, thrust
through, as they jostled at the foot of the steps; others again were
literally trampled under one another's feet and suffocated.

(10) Or, "plunged from its summit into perdition." See Thuc. ii. 4.

The Lacedaemonians had no difficulty in the choice of victims; for at
that instant a work was assigned to them to do, (11) such as they could
hardly have hoped or prayed for. To find delivered into their hands
a mob of helpless enemies, in an ecstasy of terror, presenting their
unarmed sides in such sort that none turned to defend himself, but
each victim rather seemed to contribute what he could towards his own
destruction--if that was not divine interposition, I know now what to
call it. Miracle or not, in that little space so many fell, and the
corpses lay piled so thick, that eyes familiar with the stacking of corn
or wood or piles of stones were called upon to gaze at layers of human
bodies. Nor did the guard of the Boeotians in the port itself (12)
escape death; some were slain upon the ramparts, others on the roofs of
the dock-houses, which they had scaled for refuge. Nothing remained but
for the Corinthians and Argives to carry away their dead under cover of
a truce; whilst the allies of Lacedaemon poured in their reinforcements.
When these were collected, Praxitas decided in the first place to raze
enough of the walls to allow a free broadway for an army on march. This
done, he put himself at the head of his troops and advanced on the road
to Megara, taking by assault, first Sidus and next Crommyon. Leaving
garrisons in these two fortresses, he retraced his steps, and finally
fortifying Epieiceia as a garrison outpost to protect the territory
of the allies, he at once disbanded his tr