Epaminondas

Themistocles might have lived at leisure, Epaminondas might, and — not to seek old and foreign examples — I myself might;

and so Epaminondas, in my judgement the foremost man of Greece, is said to have played excellently on the lyre, while Themistocles, some years before, when he declined the lyre at a banquet, was thought the more unschooled.

But glorious deaths met for one's country are wont to seem to the rhetoricians not only glorious but even blessed.

That Epaminondas, then, was hated by the men unlike him, and there were some who slandered him, while the people, as a people will, were ignorant and easily persuaded.

the wish both to settle the city and to gather into it as great a multitude of men as I could, and not only of the natives, but, had it been possible, by compelling other cities to come together as well — just as Epaminondas once settled Boeotia into Thebes, and Theseus Attica into Athens;

And yet formerly he himself, while a hostage in Thebes, associated with Pelopidas, an educated man — so that they said Pelopidas even became his lover — and he both beheld the deeds of Epaminondas and heard his discourses, who not by chance attained so great power among the Greeks and wrought so great a change as to overthrow the Lacedaemonians, who had ruled so long, but by having associated with …

Epaminondas, on the other hand, wishing to bring over the Achaeans to the side of the Thebans, in order that the Arcadians and the other allies might be more inclined to give heed to them, decided that he must march forth against Achaea.

When, however, the Arcadians and the Achaean opposition brought against him the charge that he had aranged matters in Achaea in the interest of the Lacedaemonians and had then gone away, the Thebans resolved to send governors to the Achaean cities.

Now upon the urgent entreaty which the aristocrats of Achaea addressed to him, Epaminondas effected through his personal influence an arrangement that their opponents were not to banish the aristocrats or to change the form of government, but after receiving pledges from the Achaeans that in very truth they would be allies and would follow wherever the Thebans led the way, he thereupon returned home.

Among the Greeks this is a modest matter:

I never heard, in the school of Epicurus, Lycurgus, Solon, Miltiades, Themistocles, Epaminondas named — who are on the lips of all the other philosophers.

Of these, the one, when he had conquered the Lacedaemonians at Mantinea, and saw himself dying of a grievous wound, as soon as he came to himself asked whether his shield was safe.