Iphicrates

Iphicrates the Athenian became renowned not so much for the greatness of his exploits as for his military discipline. For he was such a leader that he was reckoned not only among the foremost of his own age, but not even of those older than himself was anyone set before him. He was much engaged in war, often commanded armies, nowhere managed affairs ill through any fault of his own, always conquered by good counsel, and was so strong in this that he introduced into warfare many things that were partly new, partly improvements. For he changed the equipment of the infantry. Whereas before his command they used very large shields, short spears, and small swords, he, on the contrary, made the light shield (peltē) in place of the round shield (from which afterwards the foot-soldiers, who before were called hoplites, were called peltasts), that they might be lighter for movement and for charging; he doubled the length of the spear and made the swords longer. He likewise instituted a new kind of breastplate, and in place of those of chain-mail and bronze he gave them ones of linen. By this he made the soldiers more nimble: for, the weight being removed, he provided what should equally cover the body and yet be light.

He waged war with the Thracians and restored Seuthes, an ally of the Athenians, to his kingdom. At Corinth he commanded the army with such severity that never in Greece were there forces either better trained or more obedient to the word of their leader, and he brought them to such a habit that, when the signal for battle had been given by the commander, without the leader's aid they took up their ranks in such order that each man seemed to have been posted by a most skilful general. With this army he destroyed a regiment of the Lacedaemonians, which was especially celebrated throughout all Greece. Again, in the same war, he routed all their forces, by which deed he won great glory. When Artaxerxes wished to make war on the king of Egypt, he sought Iphicrates from the Athenians as leader, to set over the mercenary army, the number of which was twelve thousand. And he trained them so well in all military discipline that, just as once certain soldiers at Rome were called Fabian, so among the Greeks the Iphicrateans were held in the highest praise. The same man, having set out to the aid of the Lacedaemonians, checked the onsets of Epaminondas. For, had his arrival not been near, the Thebans would not have withdrawn from Sparta before they had taken and destroyed it by fire.

He was, moreover, of great spirit and great stature, and of a commander's bearing, so that by his very aspect he inspired in anyone admiration of himself; but in toil too remiss and too little enduring, as Theopompus has recorded, yet a good citizen and of great loyalty. This he showed in other matters, but most of all in protecting the children of Amyntas of Macedon. For Eurydice, the mother of Perdiccas and Philip, when Amyntas was dead, fled with these two boys to Iphicrates and was defended by his power. He lived to old age with the minds of his fellow-citizens at peace toward him. Once he pleaded a capital case, in the war of the allies, together with Timotheus, and by that judgement was acquitted. He left a son Menestheus, born of a Thracian woman, daughter of King Cotys. When this son was asked which he valued more, his father or his mother, he said 'My mother.' When this seemed strange to all, 'I do so with reason,' said he; 'for my father, so far as in him lay, begot me a Thracian; but my mother, on the contrary, an Athenian.'