Then, wishing to remove the discouragement and dejection which prevailed among the young men, he made an incursion into Arcadia, and though he studiously avoided joining battle with the enemy, he took a small town of the Mantineans and overran their territory, and thus lightened and gladdened the expectations of his city, which felt that its case was not wholly desperate.
Edition :
Plutarch Lives V: Agesilaus and Pompey, Pelopidas and Marcellus, Ed. Jeffrey Henderson, trans. Bernadotte Perrin (The Loeb Classical Library 87), Harvard University Press: Cambridge/MA - London 1961 (first ed. 1917).
Remark :
victim: The victims are Mantinean. motive: Agesilaus II wants "to remove the discouragement and dejection which prevailed among the young men". long-term consequence: Because of the conquest of a small Mantinean town and the plunder of Agesilaus II, Epaminondas makes an incursion into Laconia (Plut. Ages. 31.1).
