Epaminondas: Encyclopedia II - Epaminondas - The 360s BC

Epaminondas - The 360s BC

Epaminondas - First Invasion of the Peloponnese

For about a year after the victory at Leuctra, Epaminondas occupied himself with consolidating the Boeotian confederacy, compelling the previously Spartan-aligned polis of Orchomenus to join the league. In late 370 BC, however, as the Spartans under Agesilaus attempted to discipline their newly restive ally Mantinea, Epaminondas decided to capitalize on his victory by invading the Peloponnese and shattering Sparta's power once and for all. Forcing his way past the fortifications on the isthmus of Corinth, he marched southward toward Sparta, with contingents from Sparta's erstwhile allies flocking to him along the way.

In Arcadia he drove off the Spartan army threatening Mantinea, then supervised the founding of the new city of Megalopolis and the formation of an Arcadian League, modeled on the Boeotian confederacy. Moving south, he crossed the Evrotas River, the frontier of Sparta—which no hostile army had breached in historical memory. The Spartans, unwilling to engage the massive army in battle, lingered inside their city while the Thebans and their allies ravaged Laconia. Epaminondas briefly returned to Arcadia, then marched south again, this time to Messenia, a territory which the Spartans had conquered some 200 years before. There, Epaminondas rebuilt the ancient city of Messene on Mount Ithome, with fortifications that were among the strongest in Greece. He then issued a call to Messenian exiles all over Greece to return and rebuild their homeland. The loss of Messenia was particularly damaging to the Spartans, since the territory comprised one-third of Sparta's territory and contained half of their helot population.

In mere months, Epaminondas had created two new enemy states that opposed Sparta, shaken the foundations of Sparta's economy, and all but devastated Sparta's prestige. This accomplished, he led his army back home, victorious^[13].

Epaminondas - Trial

Yet, upon his return home, Epaminondas was greeted not with a hero's welcome but with a trial arranged by his political enemies. The charge—that he had retained his command longer than constitutionally permitted—was indisputably true; in order to accomplish all that he wished in the Pelopponese, Epaminondas had persuaded his fellow Boeotarchs to remain in the field for several months after their term of office had expired. In his defense Epaminondas merely requested that, if he be executed, the inscription regarding the verdict read:

Epaminondas was punished by the Thebans with death, because he obliged them to overthrow the Lacedaemonians at Leuctra, whom, before he was general, none of the Boeotians durst look upon in the field, and because he not only, by one battle, rescued Thebes from destruction, but also secured liberty for all Greece, and brought the power of both people to such a condition, that the Thebans attacked Sparta, and the Lacedaemonians were content if they could save their lives; nor did he cease to prosecute the war, till, after settling Messene, he shut up Sparta with a close siege.^[14]

The jury broke into laughter, the charges were dropped, and Epaminondas was reelected as Boeotarch for the next year.

Epaminondas - Later campaigns

In 369 BC Epaminondas again invaded the Peloponnese, but this time achieved little beyond winning Sicyon over to an alliance with Thebes. When he returned to Thebes, he was put on trial again and was again acquitted.

Despite his achievements, he was out of office the next year, the only time from the battle of Leuctra until his death that this was the case^[15]. In this year, he served as a common soldier while the army marched into Thessaly to rescue Pelopidas, who had been imprisoned by Alexander of Pherae while serving as an ambassador. The commanders who led this expedition were outmaneuvered and forced to retreat to save their army. Back in Thebes, Epaminondas was reinstated in command and led the army straight back into Thessaly, where he outmaneuvered the Thessalians and secured the release of Pelopidas without a fight^[16].

In 366 BC a common peace was drawn up in a conference at Thebes, but negotiations could not resolve the hostility between Thebes and other states that resented its influence. The peace was never fully accepted, and fighting soon resumed^[17]. In the spring of that year, Epaminondas returned to the Peloponnese for a third time, seeking on this occasion to secure the allegiance of the states of Achaea. Although no army dared to challenge him in the field, the democratic governments he established there were short-lived, as pro-Spartan aristocrats soon returned to the cities, reestablished the oligarchies, and bound their cities ever more closely to Sparta^[18].

Throughout the decade after the Battle of Leuctra, numerous former allies of Thebes defected to the Spartan alliance or even to alliances with other hostile states. As early as 371, the Athenian assembly had reacted to the news of Leuctra with stony silence. Thessalian Pherae, a reliable ally during the 370s, similarly turned against its newly dominant ally in the years after that battle. By the middle of the next decade, even some Arcadians (whose league Epaminondas had established in 369) had turned against him. Only the Messenians remained firmly loyal.

Boeotian armies campaigned across Greece as opponents rose up on all sides; in 364 BC Epaminondas even led his state in a challenge to Athens at sea^[19]. In that same year, Pelopidas was killed while campaigning against Alexander in Thessaly. His loss deprived Epaminondas of his greatest Thebean political ally^[20].

Epaminondas - Battle of Mantinea

In the face of this increasing opposition to Theban dominance, Epaminondas launched his final expedition into the Pelopponese in 362 BC. The immediate goal of the expedition was to subdue Mantinea, which had been opposing Theban influence in the region. As he approached Mantinea, however, Epaminondas received word that so many Spartans had been sent to defend Mantinea that Sparta itself was almost undefended. Seeing an opportunity, Epaminondas marched his army towards Laconia at top speed. The Spartan king Archidamus was alerted to this move by a runner, however, and Epaminondas arrived to find the city well-defended. Hoping that his adversaries had denuded the defenses of Mantinea in their haste to protect Sparta, he countermarched back to his base at Tegea and dispatched his cavalry to Mantinea, but a clash outside the walls with Athenian cavalry foiled this strategy as well. Realizing that a hoplite battle would be necessary if he wanted to preserve Theban influence in the Peloponnese, Epaminondas prepared his army for combat^[21].

What followed on the plain in front of Mantinea was the largest hoplite battle in Greek history. Nearly every state participated on one side or the other. With the Boeotians stood a number of allies: the Tegeans, Megalopolitans, and Argives chief among them. On the side of the Mantineans and Spartans stood the Athenians, Eleans, and numerous others. The infantries of both armies were 20,000 to 30,000 strong. As at Leuctra, Epaminondas drew up the Thebans on the left, opposite the Spartans and Mantineans with the allies on the right. On the wings he placed strong forces of cavalry strengthened by infantry. Thus, he hoped to win a quick victory in the cavalry engagements and begin a rout of the enemy phalanx.

The battle unfolded as Epaminondas had planned. The stronger forces on the wings drove back the Athenian and Mantinean cavalry opposite them and began to attack the flanks of the enemy phalanx. In the hoplite battle, the issue briefly hung in the balance, but then the Thebans on the left broke through against the Spartans, and the entire enemy phalanx was put to flight. It seemed that another decisive Theban victory on the model of Leuctra was about to unfold until, as the victorious Thebans set off in pursuit of their fleeing opponents, Epaminondas was mortally wounded. He died shortly thereafter.

As news of Epaminondas' death on the field of battle was passed from soldier to soldier, the allies across the field ceased in their pursuit of the defeated troops—a testament to Epaminondas's centrality to the war effort. Xenophon, who ends his history with the battle of Mantinea, says of the battle's results

When these things had taken place, the opposite of what all men believed would happen was brought to pass. For since well-nigh all the people of Greece had come together and formed themselves in opposing lines, there was no one who did not suppose that if a battle were fought, those who proved victorious would be the rulers and those who were defeated would be their subjects; but the deity so ordered it that both parties set up a trophy as though victorious and neither tried to hinder those who set them up, that both gave back the dead under a truce as though victorious, and both received back their dead under a truce as though defeated, and that while each party claimed to be victorious, neither was found to be any better off, as regards either additional territory, or city, or sway, than before the battle took place; but there was even more confusion and disorder in Greece after the battle than before^[22].

With his dying words, Epaminondas is said to have advised the Thebans to make peace, as there was no one left to lead them. After the battle a common peace was arranged on the basis of the status quo.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The 360s BC", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki