29.4
Then a Spartan, who was a friend of Lysander, asked in amazement what he meant by Hoplites, for he did not know the name. Indeed it was there, said the Phocian, that the enemy slew the foremost of us; for the stream that flows past the city is called Hoplites. On hearing this, the Spartan burst into tears, and said that man could not escape his destiny.
29.5
For Lysander, as it appears, had received an oracle running thus:— Be on thy guard, I bid thee, against a sounding Hoplites, And an earth-born dragon craftily coming behind thee. Some, however say that the Hoplites does not flow before Haliartus, but is a winter torrent near Coroneia, which joins the Philarus and then flows past that city; in former times it was called Hoplaas, but now Isomantus.
29.6
Moreover, the man of Haliartus who killed Lysander, Neochorus by Dame, had a dragon as emblem on his shield, and to this, it was supposed, the oracle referred. And it is said that the Thebans also, during the Peloponnesian war, received an oracle at the sanctuary of Ismenus which indicated beforehand not only the battle at Delium,424 B.C. but also this battle at Haliartus, thirty years later.
