Xenophon

“ 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; [9] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Some fled to the images of the gods in the market-place, others to the altars; and here these unhallowed miscreants, ringleaders and followers alike, utterly regardless of duty and law, fell to butchering their victims even within the sacred precincts of the gods; so that even some of those against whom no hand was lifted--honest, law-abiding folk--were filled with sore amazement at sight of such impiety. 4In this way many of the elder citizens, as mustering more thickly in the market-place, were done to death. ”

“ It was a design worth the venture: if they succeeded they would become the saviours of their country; if not--why, in the effort to grasp the fairest flower of happiness, they would but overreach, and find instead a glorious termination to existence.
7It was in furtherance of this design that two men--Pasimelus and Alcimenes--undertook to creep through a watercourse and effect a meeting with Praxitas the polemarch of the Lacedaemonians, who was on garrison duty with his own division in Sicyon. They told him they could give him ingress at a point in the long walls leading to Lechaeum. ”

“ On the next day, however, the Argive troops arrived in all haste, hurrying to the rescue, and found the enemy duly drawn up. The Lacedaemonians were on their own right, the men of Sicyon next, and leaning against the eastern wall the Corinthian exiles, one hundred and fifty strong. [8] Their opponents marshalled their lines face to face in correspondence: Iphicrates with his mercenaries abutting on the eastern wall; next to them the Argives, whilst the Corinthians of the city held their left. 10In the pride inspired by numbers they began advancing at once. ”

“ With most people the life even of a legally condemned criminal is held sacred during a solemn season, but these men deliberately selected the last day of the Eucleia, [3] when they might reckon on capturing more victims in the crowded market-place, for their murderous purposes. ”