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[4] For up to this time they were wont to think the conquest of their enemies so customary and natural a thing for them to achieve, that no sacrifice for victory was offered in the city to the gods, beyond that of a cock, neither did the winners of the contest exult, nor those who heard of their victory show great joy. Nay, even after the battle at Mantinea, 1 which Thucydides has described, the one who first announced the victory had no other reward for his glad tidings than a piece of meat sent by the magistrates from the public mess.

1 In 418 B.C., when the Lacedaemonians defeated an allied force of Mantineans, Argives, and Athenians (Thucydides, v. 64-75).

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