Friday, November 24, 2006

Pausanias on The Battle of Champions

As you climb away inland you come to the spot where three hundred picked men of Argos fought over this ground with the same number of picked Spartans. Every man in the battle was killed except one Spartan and two Argives. They piled up tumuli for the dead; then Sparta won a full-scale battle-victory over Argos, and reaped by violence the present enjoyment of the country: they later turned it over to the Aiginetans whom the Athenians had turned out of their own island. In my time the Argives were in possession of Thyreatis. I was told they recovered it by a victory at law.



Pausanias, Guide to Greece, 2.38.5

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