Theban destruction of Spartan military supremacy.
Date: Summer, 371 b. c.e.
Category: Wars and battles Locale: Southwestern Boeotia
Summary From 400 until 371 b. c.e., Sparta strove to create an empire in Greece and opposed the unification of Boeotian cities. The Theban Epaminondas defied Sparta at the peace conference of 371, insisting on the right of the Boeotian Confederacy to exist. In retaliation, King Agesilaus II of Sparta ordered his army to attack Thebes.
Under King Cleombrotus, the Spartan and allied army marched from Phocis into western Boeotia, continuing along the southern coast to neutralize the Boeotian navy. Cleombrotus’s route gave Epaminondas time to block him at the small, narrow plain of Leuctra (LEWK-trah). Cleom-brotus deployed his army of some 11,000 troops in two wings with the Spartans on the right. To the north, Epaminondas surprised the Spartans with some innovations. He massed his Theban contingent fifty shields deep on the left in a formation that jutted forward from his main line. He ordered his Boeotian confederates on his right to advance more slowly than he and to march in an oblique formation. Pelopidas, his subordinate officer, led the elite Sacred Band as his cutting edge. The cavalry of both armies took an unusual position in front of their phalanxes.
Cleombrotus opened the battle by ordering his cavalry to attack and by shifting the Spartans to the right to outflank Epaminondas. A gap opened in his line through which streamed his defeated cavalry. Pelopidas charged immediately, pinning the Spartans until Epaminondas brought the main force to bear. Cleombrotus was killed and the Spartan army broken.
Significance By destroying the Spartan army, Epaminondas ended Spartan ascendancy in Greece and created the Theban hegemony.
Further Reading
Brewer, Paul. Warfare in the Ancient World. Austin, Tex.: Raintree Steck-Vaughn, 1999.
Buckler, J. The Theban Hegemony, 371-362 B. C. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980.
Lazenby, J. F. The Spartan Army. Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1985.
Montagu, John Drogo. Battles of the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Chronological Compendium of 667 Battles to 31 B. C., from the Historians of the Ancient World. Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 2000.
John Buckler
See also: Agesilaus II of Sparta; Epaminondas; King’s Peace.
World History
