However, the affair at Tegyra, which in a manner was preliminary to that at Leuktra, won Pelopidas a great reputation; for there was no question of any other general having assisted in the design of the battle, nor of the enemy being thoroughly routed.  The city of Orchomenus had taken the Spartan side, and had received two moras[10] of Spartan troops for its protection.  He always had his eye upon this place, and watched his opportunity.  Hearing that the garrison had made an expedition into Lokris, he marched, hoping to catch Orchomenus 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 Ptouem, 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 Lacedaemonians marching back from Lokris, in the opposite direction.  When they were first descried coming out from the narrow gorges of the hills, some one ran to Pelopidas, and cried out, “We have fallen into the midst of the enemy!” “Why so,” asked he, “more than they into the midst of us?” He at once ordered his cavalry to the front to charge the enemy first, and closed up his infantry, three hundred in number, into a compact body, trusting that wherever he attacked the enemy he should break through, although they outnumbered him.  They consisted of two moras of Lacedaemonians:  now Ephorus says that a mora consists of 500 men, but Kallisthenes says 700, and some other authorities, and amongst them Polybius, put it at 900.