When, then, they had determined to face the enemy, and taken up a position at Leuktra opposite to the Spartan army, Pelopidas saw a vision in his sleep which greatly disturbed him.  In the plain of Leuktra there are the tombs of the daughters of Skedasus, whom they call Leuktridae because of the place of their burial; for there it was that they were buried after they had been violated by some Spartan strangers.  When this base and impious deed was done, their father, as he could get no satisfaction from the Lacedaemonians, invoked curses upon the Spartan race, and slew himself at the tombs of his daughters.  Oracles and legends always had warned the Spartans to beware of the vengeance of Leuktra, though most of them did not understand it, and were not clear as to the place, since a small sea-side town in Laconia is also called Leuktron, and there is a place of the same name near Megalopolis in Arcadia, and, also, this crime was committed a long time before the battle.

XXI.  So now Pelopidas, when asleep in the camp, seemed to see the maidens weeping over their tombs and invoking curses on the Spartans, and Skedasus, who bade him sacrifice a red virgin to the maidens, if he wished to conquer his enemies.  And as this command seemed to him shocking and impious, he started up and consulted the prophets and the generals.  Some of them forbade him to neglect or disobey the warning, quoting the famous old instances of Menaekeus the son of Kreon and Makaria the daughter of Herakles, and, in later times, Pherekydes the philosopher, who was killed by the Lacedaemonians, and whose skin, according to some oracle, is still kept by their kings, and Leonidas, who following the oracle did in some sort offer himself as a victim on behalf of Greece; and futhermore they spoke of those persons whom Themistokles sacrificed to Dionysus before the sea-fight at Salamis.  All these are verified by the success which followed them.  And again, Agesilaus when starting from the same place that Agamemnon did to fight the same enemies, was asked by the god, during a vision at Aulis, to give him his daughter as a sacrifice; but he did not give her, but by his softheartedness ruined the expedition, which ingloriously failed.  Others spoke on the other side, urging that so barbarous and impious a sacrifice could not be pleasing to any of the powers above, for, they said, it is not the Typhons and giants of legend that rule in heaven, but the father of all gods and men.  To believe that there are deities that delight in the blood and slaughter of mankind is probably a foolish fancy; but if there be such, it is our duty to disregard them and treat them as powerless, for these strange and shocking desires can only take their origin and exist in feeble and depraved minds.