Lycurgus, after giving his orders for the approaching engagement to his officers and friends, himself sallied from the city and occupied the ground round the Menelaïum, his total force consisting of not less than two thousand men;
but those who remained in the city he had ordered to be on the look out and when the signal was hoisted, to lead out their forces at several points with all speed, and draw them up facing the Eurotas, where the stream is at the shortest distance from the city.
Such was the position of Lycurgus and the Lacedaemonians.
But lest owing to ignorance of the localities my narrative tend to become vague and meaningless, I must describe their natural features and relative positions,
as indeed I attempt to do throughout my whole work, by bringing any places with which my readers are unacquainted into connexion and relation with those familiar to them from personal knowledge or reading.
For seeing that in the majority of land and sea battles in a war defeat is due to difference of position, and since we all wish to know not so much what happened as how it happened, we must by no means neglect to illustrate by local descriptions events of any sort, and least of all those of a war, nor must we hesitate to adopt as landmarks harbours, seas, and islands, or again temples, mountains, and local names of districts, and finally differences of climate, as these latter are most universally recognized by mankind.
For this, as I said on a former occasion, is the only way of making readers acquainted with places of which they are ignorant.
The following, then, are the features of the country in question.
Walbank Commentary