lay close under the walls of the town, it would be almost impossible, even if they were victorious, to recover it otherwise than by treaty, sent a herald, obtained the necessary truce, and led away his forces.  As soon as the Spartans crossed the Boeotian frontier they buried the body of Lysander in the territory of the friendly and allied city of Panope, in Phokis, where at the present day his monument stands by the side of the road from Chaeronea to Delphi.[160] It is said that while the army was encamped there one of the Phokians, while describing the battle to another who had not been present, said that the enemy fell upon them just after Lysander had crossed the Hoplites.[161] A Spartan who was present was surprised at this word, and enquired of Lysander’s friend, what he meant by the Hoplites, for he did not understand it.  “It was where,” answered he, “the enemy overthrew our front ranks; for they call the stream which runs past the city the Hoplites.”  On hearing these words the Spartan burst into tears, and exclaimed, “How impossible is it for a man to escape his fate:”—­for it seems Lysander had received an oracular warning in these words: 

    “I warn thee, shun Hoplites roaring track. 
    And th’ earth-born snake that stings behind thy back.”

Some say that the Hoplites does not run by Haliartus, but that it is the name of a torrent which joins the river Philarus near Koronea, which used to be called the Hoplias, and is now called Isomantus.  The man who killed Lysander was a citizen of Haliartus named Neochorus, who bore a snake as the device upon his shield, which it is supposed was alluded to by the oracle.

We are also told that during the Peloponnesian war the Thebans received an oracle from Apollo Ismenius, referring immediately to the battle of Delium, and also to this battle at Haliartus, which took place thirty years afterwards.  It ran as follows: 

    “Beware the boundary, when you hunt
      The wolf with spears;
    And shun the Orchalian hill, the fox’s haunt,
      For endless years.”

The boundary alludes to the country near Delium, which is on the borders of Attica and Boeotia, and the Orchalian hill, which is now called Fox-hill, lies in the territory of Haliartus, on the side nearest Mount Helikon.

XXX.  The death of Lysander, as related above, grieved the Spartans so much that they impeached their king on a capital charge, and he, fearing the result of the trial, fled to Tegea, where he spent the remainder of his life in the sanctuary of Athena as a suppliant of the goddess.  Moreover the poverty of Lysandor, which was discovered after his death, made his virtue more splendid, for although he had handled great sums of money, and possessed immense power; though his favour had been courted by wealthy cities, and even by the great king of Persia himself, yet Theopompus tells us that he did not in the least degree improve his family estate:  an account which we may the more