Page "Epaminondas" Paragraph 41

Xenophon, who ends his history with the battle of Mantinea, says of the battle's results: When these things had taken place, the opposite of what all men believed would happen was brought to pass.

For since well-nigh all the people of Greece had come together and formed themselves in opposing lines, there was no one who did not suppose that if a battle were fought, those who proved victorious would be the rulers and those who were defeated would be their subjects ; but the deity so ordered it that both parties set up a trophy as though victorious and neither tried to hinder those who set them up, that both gave back the dead under a truce as though victorious, and both received back their dead under a truce as though defeated, and that while each party claimed to be victorious, neither was found to be any better off, as regards either additional territory, or city, or sway, than before the battle took place ; but there was even more confusion and disorder in Greece after the battle than before.