defenceless, taking with him the Sacred Band and a few cavalry. When
he came to the city he found that the garrison had been relieved by
fresh troops from Sparta, and so he led off his men homewards through
Tegyra, the only way that he could, by a circuitous route at the foot
of the mountains; for the river Melas, which from its very source
spreads into morasses and quagmires, made the direct way impassable.

Near the marshes stands a temple of Apollo of Tegyra and an oracle,
which is now forsaken; it has not been long so, but flourished up to
the Persian War, when Echekrates was priest. There the myths say that
the god was born; and the neighbouring mountain is called Delos, and
there the overflowings of the river Melas cease, while behind the
temple there flow two springs remarkable for the sweetness, coldness,
and volume of their waters, which we up to this day call, the one "The
Palm," and the other "The Olive," as though the goddess had not been
delivered between two trees, but two fountains. Indeed, close by is
the Ptoüm, whence they say that she was driven in terror by the sudden
apparition of a wild boar, and with regard to the legends of Tityos
and Pytho, the localities are in like manner associated with the birth
of the god. I omit the greater part of these proofs, for our ancestral
religion tells us that this god is not to be ranked among those
divinities who were born as men, like Herakles and Dionysus, and by
their merits were translated from this earthly and suffering body, but
he is one of the eternal ones who know no birth, if one may form any
conjecture upon such matters from the writings of our wisest and most
ancient writers.

XVII. At Tegyra, then, Pelopidas and the Thebans retiring from
Orchomenus met the Lacedæmonians marching back from Lokris, in the
opposite direction. When they were first descried coming out from the