And just then, the astonishing news came: a large Spartan army had entered the Arcadia region from the north!

The councillors of the city-states of the Acadian League were shocked, especially the Mandinians, led by Lycomedes.

Wasn't Sparta southeast of Arcadia, and how could its army appear in the north?

It turned out that Sparta had hired a lot of soldiers in northern Greece, Ionia and Asia Minor with the gold and silver provided by Persia, and Persia also provided ships to transport them to Greece, but they did not land on the coast of Sparta, because it was blocked by the Dionian fleet, but with the tacit consent of Athens and Corinth, they entered the Gulf of Saron, east of the isthmus, and docked at the harbor of Corinth. After the mercenaries had come ashore and assembled, they were led south by Archidamus.

Lycomedes was anxious, because Mandinia was located in the northeast of the Arcadia region, which was the only way for the Spartan army, and Mandinia, as the advocate of the Arcadian alliance, was a thorn in the side of the Spartans.

Lycomedes exclaimed in the alliance: "The great army of the Spartans with the help of Persia entered the territory of Arcadia without permission, and they did not come for peace, they came to destroy the Arcadian alliance that Sparta regarded as a threat, and they wanted to re-enslave the Arcadians to fight for the interests of Sparta!" If the Arcadian Alliance does not form an alliance with Dionya as soon as possible, and let the Dionian army stop the murderous Spartan mercenary army, then the alliance that has only been formed for a long time will soon perish, and everyone who supports the formation of the alliance will also become the soul of the Spartan club! ”

The councillors were moved by Lycomedes' words, and they were told that the soldiers of the Spartan army who had invaded Arcadia had wreaked havoc and ravaged the land of Frios.

Eventually, the Arcadian Coalition passed the agreement by a narrow margin.

In the early spring of 370 BC (the twenty-fourth year of the Dionian kingdom), the Arcadian League and Dionya formed an alliance, and then Crotocatax led the 1st, 4th, and 6th legions, the Mountain Scout Brigade, the 1st Cavalry Corps, and half of the 7th Legion (with 3,000 soldiers stationed in Messenia), a total of about 32,000 soldiers, marching north into Arcadian region.

At this time, the Spartan mercenaries led by Archidamus were already attacking Mandinia, and the Spartan Council of Elders had already learned the news from the pro-Spartan faction in the northern neighbor that "the Arcadian alliance would form an alliance with Dionia", and hated Mandinia, the leader of the alliance, and because the timely arrival of the mercenary army boosted their confidence, they decided to preemptively inflict heavy damage on Mandinia, shock the Arcadian alliance, and force it to fall back to Sparta.

The reason why the Spartans dared to make such a decision was that this army of 8,000 heavy infantry, which was formed at great expense, was mainly employed by the Greek city-states of Miletus, Ephesus, Samos, Chios,, Aeolia, which belonged to the western coast of Persian Asia Minor; 4,500 Thracian light shieldmen, mainly recruited from Thracian tribes north of the Kingdom of Macedonia, near the Aegean Sea, near the Rhodopi Mountains; 1,500 cavalrymen were hired mainly from the Macedonian kingdom; 1,200 archers and slingers came from Crete and Rhodes, and more than 4,000 light armoured soldiers from the Ionian islands in the Aegean Sea...... There were more than 20,000 soldiers in total, and at least 10,000 Daric gold coins were required to pay a month, and countless amounts of food were consumed, all of which were of course provided by the Persians.

For the first time, Archidamus led such a large and well-armed army, and he was confident that he would capture Mandinia in a short time.

But when he led his army into the Mandinian territory, all the Mandinian people had already taken refuge in the city, so Azidamus began to storm the city of Mandinia. He originally thought that with the superior forces he had, he should be able to capture Mandinian City quickly, but he didn't expect to hit a hard nail.

The former city of Mandinia was washed away by the Spartans, and after the Mandinians who had been in exile for many years returned to their homeland, they would never let their city fall to the Spartans again, so they designed the new city cleverly.

The Mandinians chose a very high site on the banks of the Orpheus River as the site for the construction of the city, and then dug a new channel nearby, so that the Orpheus River was divided in two upstream of the city, bypassing the new city site, and meeting the lower reaches of the city, and the river that was originally a great threat was transformed into a natural moat for the city.

They also laid a solid stone foundation for the whole city, and the walls were all made of bricks, but the walls were not complete and continuous, because the whole city was divided into 10 separate parts, each of which was not connected to the other, but overlapped with each other, and where there were gates, so that the new city of Mandinia had 10 gates.

Such a unique and irregular city meant that the Spartan army had to conquer each city in order to completely occupy the entire city. The independent nature of the Mandinian walls according to the elevation of the terrain not only prevented the superior forces of the Spartans from fully deploying, but also exposed the besieging soldiers to long-range attacks from multiple flanks on the defending side, not to mention the Orpheus River as a barrier.

Archidamus launched several attacks on the city of Mandinia using the traditional Greek siege method, but instead of making any progress, he suffered some casualties, forcing him to switch from a siege to a siege and send messengers back to Sparta to report on the situation.

At the same time, Crotocatacus had already led his army into southwestern Arcadia, a rare hilly area in Arcadia, where the Hellison River ran from south to north. In the mountains to the east-central of the country lies the main sacred mountain where the Acadians performed their religious ceremonies, Lycaon, and the new central town of Megalopolis is located on the eastern bank of the Hurlison River and the sacred mountain of Lycaon.

Due to the outbreak of war with the Spartans, the construction of the new city of Megalopolis had been halted, the walls that served as the outline of the city were only halfway built, and the temple of Zeus, the most important to the Arcadians, had only a dozen columns erected...... The city was littered with scaffolding and piles of stones, but only one building, though rudimentary, had already been built, and that was the Council of the Arcadian League, which was the basis of the entire Alliance's existence, and the three councillors elected by the people of each city-state lived here for a long time, and consulted and decided on the foreign and military affairs of the League in accordance with the rules established by the League.

At this moment, dozens of members of the Coalition walked out of the city of Megalopolis together, and stood on a high place and looked south: I saw in the distance countless Ionian soldiers in the distance, dressed in fine armor and weapons, lined up in a neat column, crossing the pontoon bridge they had quickly built over the Hellison River, although the sound of footsteps and armor clashing was quite noisy, and the dust was flying and filled, few people complained loudly, and the whole army was like a silent black dragon, swimming forward without stopping......

The Acadian councillors stood and looked at it for a long time, unable to see neither the head nor the tail of the dragon, and their hearts were a little impressive.

Then the dragon branched off and headed north. As they approached, the young general, who was riding a tall horse and wearing a golden crown at the front, raised his right hand and waved it down, and then the army behind him stopped advancing in an instant, and the soldiers stood silent...... Once again, the MPs were taken by surprise.

Lycoedes immediately stepped down from the top and went to greet him, followed by the other councillors.

Klotocatax also dismounted, leading Printors, Mukru, and the court guards to meet him.

"General Klotocatax, thank you very much for coming in time!" Lycomedes solemnly bowed to Prince Dionia.

Crotocatacus hurriedly held him up, and said sincerely: "Lord Lycomedes, now that the Arcadia Alliance and Dionysia are allies, this is what we should do!" Rest assured, according to the military law of Dionia, our soldiers will not do anything on the land of our allies to destroy the friendship between the peoples of the two countries! If there are really soldiers who disobey, they will be punished severely! ”

As soon as these words came out, many Acadia councilors breathed a sigh of relief.

Coldly, one of the councillors asked loudly, "How many soldiers have you sent?" ”

Printors took over: "Considering that Arcadia is mountainous and difficult to deploy, we have brought only more than 30,000 soldiers, and more than 10,000 are still garrisoned in Messenia (Printors counts both the Messenians and the First Fleet's fleet infantry).

Most of the parliamentarians gasped, and then let out a sigh: more than 40,000 fully equipped soldiers! They had never seen such a large army in their lives! No wonder the marching troops of Dionya meandered so long that the head and tail were not visible at all!

The last time there was such an army in Greece was during the Greco-Persian Wars a hundred years ago, when more than 100,000 soldiers (two-fifths of the total number of heavy infantry) were gathered in the Greek city-states to fight the Persians in Plata. The second is the Peloponnesian War a few decades ago, when Athens is said to have sent an army of about 30,000 men to Sicily's Syracuse, which ended in a crushing defeat.

But these two years ago, they did not see it with their own eyes, and the few parliamentarians experienced only the Battle of Leuktra, which took place not long ago, and the Peloponnesian coalition led by Sparta was more than 10,000 people, and the two sides of the war totaled about 20,000 people, which was already a large-scale battle in their eyes.