Battle of Leuctra

"For when the Lacedaemonians were defeated at Leuctra by the Thebans, the Thebans, having marched into the Peloponnese with their allies, compelled the Lacedaemonians to give back the Messenian land, and all who were born of those who formerly served among the Lacedaemonians, those called Helots, they settled again in Messene.

and that this company, named the Sacred Band, prevailed over the Lacedaemonians in the battle at Leuctra, all the Greeks following those men;

In that battle a thousand Lacedaemonians fell, besides Cleombrotus the king, and around him the mightiest of the Spartans.

Now that the Lacedaemonians had met with an unexpected reverse, and the Thebans with an unlooked-for success surpassing that of any other Hellenes at strife with Hellenes, the high conduct of the defeated city was no less to be envied and admired than that of the victorious city.

Among these, they say, was Cleonymus, the beautiful son of Sphodrias, who was thrice struck down in front of his king, as many times rose again to his feet, and died there, fighting the Thebans.

The Spartans had been deprived of their strength by the battle of Leuctra, and the Eurotas, which had never yet heard an enemy trumpet, saw Boeotians camping in Laconia.

When the Phocian war began—not by my fault, for I was still outside politics—you were at first disposed to hope that the Phocians would escape ruin, although you knew that they were in the wrong, and to exult over any misfortune that might befall the Thebans, with whom you were justly and reasonably indignant because of the immoderate use they had made of the advantage they gained at Leuctra.

— so, when peace was made in the archonship of Phrasicleides, and the battle was fought at Leuctra between the Thebans and the Lacedaemonians, this man Stephanus, having at the time come to Megara and having put up at Neaera’s house, as at the house of a courtesan, and having had intercourse with her, she told him all that had taken place and her brutal treatment by Phrynion.

Did they not rob the Eleans of part of their territory, did they not lay waste the land of the Corinthians, did they not disperse the Mantineans from their homes, did they not reduce the Phliasians by siege, and did they not invade the country of the Argives, never ceasing from their depredations upon the rest of the world and so bringing upon themselves the disaster at Leuctra?

The Lacedaemonians were the leaders of the Hellenes, not long ago, on both land and sea, and yet they suffered so great a reversal of fortune when they met defeat at Leuctra that they were deprived of their power over the Hellenes, and lost such of their warriors as chose to die rather than survive defeat at the hands of those over whom they had once been masters.

So Cleomenes led forth his forces and occupied Leuctra, a stronghold of Megalopolis.

This was the Lydiadas who renounced the tyranny, gave back to the citizens their freedom, and attached the city to the Achaean league.

The Thebans, having beaten the Lacedaemonians at Leuctra, marched to the river Eurotas itself, where one of them boasting said, Where are the Spartans now?

However, the wittiness of the speech could not remove the shame of the deed, and the Spartans lost their supremacy in the disastrous battle of Leuctra, though the glory of Sparta had been lost before that by this treaty.

Ismenias the Theban also, and Pelopidas, who had just been victorious in the battle of Leuctra, went up to the king.

but after the Spartans had been defeated at Leuctra, they fell so low as to beg for money, and sent Agesilaüs to Egypt, while Antalcidas went up to Artaxerxes to ask him to supply the wants of the Lacedaemonians.

And it was doubtless this feeling which Epaminondas also is said to have confessed, in considering it his greatest good fortune that his father and mother lived to know of his generalship and victory at Leuctra.

On the other hand, when we consider the remedy which Agesilaüs applied to the perplexity of the state in dealing with those who had played the coward, after the disaster at Leuctra, when he urged that the laws should slumber for that day, there was never another political device like it, nor can we find anything in Pompey’s career to compare with it;

For, in the first place, he did not desert nor abandon his city, though the enemy attacked it with an army of seventy thousand men, while he had only a few men-at-arms, and these had recently been vanquished at Leuctra;

However, with these exploits of Marcellus one may compare the battles of Leuctra and Tegyra, greatest and most illustrious of actions;

unless, indeed, it should be said that this exploit belongs rather to Epaminondas than to Pelopidas, as well as the victory at Leuctra, while Marcellus shared with no one the glory of his achievements.

Hannibal was, it is true, a most formidable enemy for the Romans, but so, assuredly, were the Lacedaemonians in the time of Pelopidas for the Thebans, and that they were defeated by Pelopidas at Tegyra and Leuctra is an established fact;

Epaminondas is reported wittily to have said of a good man that died about the time of the battle of Leuctra, How came he to have so much leisure as to die, when there was so much business stirring?

but Antisthenes the Socratic, when he saw the Thebans in high feather after the battle of Leuctra, said in all seriousness that they were just like little boys strutting about because they had thrashed their tutor.

In the battle, while Epaminondas was drawing his phalanx obliquely towards the left, in order that the right wing of the Spartans might be separated as far as possible from the rest of the Greeks, and that he might thrust back Cleombrotus by a fierce charge in column with all his men-at-arms, the enemy understood what he was doing and began to change their formation;

But at this point Pelopidas darted forth from his position, and with his band of three hundred on the run, came up before Cleombrotus had either extended his wing or brought it back again into its old position and closed up his line of battle, so that the Lacedaemonians were not standing in array, but moving confusedly about among each other when his onset reached them.

And yet the Spartans, who were of all men past masters in the art of war, trained and accustomed themselves to nothing so much as not to straggle or get into confusion upon a change of formation, but to take anyone without exception as neighbour in rank or in file, and wheresoever danger actually threatened, to seize that point and form in close array and fight as well as ever.

After the fight at Leuctra, the Ephori, seeing the city void of men, were willing to dispense with that disgrace, and empowered Agesilaus to make a law to that purpose.

Of all the happy and prosperous events that befell him, he said that in this he took most satisfaction, that he overcame the Lacedaemonians at Leuctra while his father and mother, that begot him, were living.

In addition the slaves and many of the outlander communities were in revolt, and at least as many of the Spartan nobles had fallen in the battle of Leuctra as survived.

On the other hand, after the disaster at Leuctra, when his adversaries in league with the Mantineans were murdering his friends and acquaintances in Tegea, and a coalition of all Boeotia, Arcadia and Elis had been formed, he took the field with the Lacedaemonian forces only, thus disappointing the general expectation that the Lacedaemonians would not even go outside their own borders for a long time to come.

As for the Thebans, immediately after the battle they sent to Athens a garlanded messenger, and while telling of the greatness of their victory, they at the same time urged the Athenians to come to their aid, saying that now it was possible to take vengeance upon the Lacedaemonians for all the harm they had done to them.

Again, when both sides were arming themselves and it was already evident that there would be a battle, in the first place, after those who had provided the market and some baggage-carriers and such as did not wish to fight had set out to withdraw from the Boeotian army, the Lacedaemonian mercenaries under Hieron, the peltasts of the Phocians, and, among the horsemen, the Heracleots and Phliasians …

For all the Boeotians were now training themselves in the craft of arms, glorying in their victory at Leuctra;