Chapter 9
Introduction
The Spartans were thought to be invincible on the battlefield. For centuries, they had carefully cultivated their image as peerless warriors. Their stand to the death at Thermopylae against Xerxes’ hordes is still today the stuff of legend. The Spartan reputation was not completely unjustified: the core of the Spartan army trained for war constantly, making the Spartans more than a match for the citizen militias of most other Greek states. This Spartan image, however, was irrevocably tarnished on the plains of Boeotia in 371 BCE. Not far from Plataea, the site of one of the Spartans’ greatest victories, the Thebans and their Boeotian allies smashed the Spartan phalanx, and even killed one of the Spartan kings. Sparta soon after was stripped of its Peloponnesian power base, and would never recover. Behind this stunning reversal was Thebes’ own military genius, Epameinondas, and a fearsome elite corps of professional Theban warriors, the Sacred Band. With a left wing stacked an unprecedented fifty hoplites deep, Epameinondas ‘crushed the head of the serpent’ of the Spartan army and upended battlefield tactics for good.
Directions to the Site
The plain of Leuctra is a little under an hour-and-a-half ’s drive from the centre of Athens and twenty minutes from Thiva. The battlefield, next to the modern village of Lefktra, is only 11km past Plataea, making it easy to visit both sites in a single morning or afternoon. From Athens, take the National Highway (NH)/ Attiki Odos west towards Corinth, following the signs for Elefsina. Near Elefsina, turn off the NH and head north, following the signs for Thiva and taking the main road over Mt Kithairon. This road passes the ancient sites of Oinoi and Eleutherai, both well worth seeing, especially the latter, which is one of the best-preserved ancient forts in Greece. About 33km from the NH, the road descends into the Boeotian plain and reaches the village of Erythres. At Erythres, turn left to go east towards modern Plataies, about 4km to the west. Continue past Plataies for around 11km, following the signs for Lefktra. Just north-west of the village, right next to the prominent irrigation canal, is the restored Theban victory monument from the battle, marking the eastern edge of the battlefield.
Historical Outline of the Battle
The first half of the fourth century BCE, coming on the heels of the twenty-sevenyear-long Peloponnesian War, was a period of near anarchy in mainland Greece, with war upon war and a complex and shifting web of alliances. Although the Spartans began the century as the undisputed Greek superpower, their ham-fisted attempts at replacing the Athenians as imperial masters of the Aegean so angered the other Greeks that many major states, including Argos, Corinth and Thebes, joined together with Athens to fight the Spartans in the Corinthian War (395-387 BCE). This war ended in a stalemate and great humiliation for the Greeks: of all people, Artaxerxes, the King of Persia, was called upon to broker a peace treaty among the Greeks, what came to be known as the King’s Peace, or the Peace of Antalcidas after the Spartan who had negotiated terms at the Persian court. The peace left most Greeks unsatisfied, except for the Spartans. The treaty’s key clause was that all Greeks should be left free and autonomous, which meant, of course, that Athens should not try to rule an empire again (a long shot in any case in 387), but also that Thebes should not be the leading power, or hegemon, of a unified Boeotian League. Sparta, on the other hand, for some reason was still able to maintain a position of dominance in the Peloponnese. With most Greeks, especially the Thebans, left simmering with resentment, the King’s Peace was not destined to last long.
Tensions boiled over because of two Spartan misdeeds. First, in 382, a Spartan named Phoebidas, marching past Thebes with a military force on unrelated business, seemingly at a whim stormed and captured the Cadmeia, the Theban acropolis. The Theban democratic leaders were forced into exile while pro-Spartan Thebans took over the city. To make matters worse, Phoebidas was treated leniently at home by King Agesilaus instead of being punished for such a flagrant violation of the King’s Peace. In fact, Agesilaus was accused of secretly authorizing Phoebidas’ actions, a charge which the historian – and friend of Agesilaus – Xenophon denied. In 379, the Athenians helped the exiled Thebans, including a man named Pelopidas – whom we’ll meet later – return to power and expel the Spartan garrison. For their trouble, the Athenians were rewarded with a Spartan attempt to seize the port of the Piraeus. Another apparently rogue Spartan, Sphodrias, tried to take the Piraeus on a night raid in 378, but failed miserably. Xenophon tells us that the Thebans bribed Sphodrias to do this in order to gain a firmer Athenian alliance against Sparta. After the failed raid, Sphodrias was tried by the Spartans in absentia and acquitted of any wrongdoing. Once again, the Spartans were cavalier with regard to the independence of the other Greeks, and it cost them. Athens and Thebes became anti-Spartan allies, and Athens founded a new naval confederacy, supposedly kinder and gentler than the fifth-century Athenian Empire, but an Aegean-wide alliance nonetheless.
Hostilities between the major Greek powers, especially Sparta and Thebes, continued for the next few years. Tired of so much warfare, the Greeks ratified a new common peace in 375 on the model of the King’s Peace. Tensions and violence nevertheless continued, so again in 371 the Greeks gathered at a peace conference to craft yet another peace treaty. During this latest conference, however, the Theban delegation refused to go along with the others. After initially signing the treaty, which again granted all Greeks their freedom and independence, the Thebans repented the next day. After all, it had only been Sparta that really benefitted from the previous peace arrangements. The Theban envoy at the conference, a man named Epameinondas, who would play the lead Theban role at Leuctra, demanded that the Thebans be allowed to swear to the peace on behalf of all Boeotians, just like the Spartans had for their own allies. The Spartans refused, insisting that the Boeotians be allowed to be free and independent from the Thebans. Epameinondas and his delegation angrily stormed out and left the conference, outraged at yet more Spartan hypocrisy. For Thebes, it now seemed that the writing was on the wall. Thebes was isolated without the anti-Spartan allies like Athens it had enjoyed for the previous several years.
Following the debacle of the peace conference, most Greek states began to remove soldiers and garrisons from other parts of Greece in order to make a show at least of allowing every state to be autonomous. For their part, the Spartans removed their forces from most places, but decided against withdrawing their army from the vicinity of Boeotia and Thebes. Instead, the Spartans disregarded the treaty altogether and invaded Boeotia in force from their base in Phocis to the west, under the pretext that it was the Thebans who had broken the peace by refusing to allow the Boeotians their independence. Strategically speaking, the aftermath of the conference of 371 seemed to be the perfect opportunity for Sparta to humble their rival for good, without worrying that the Athenians or anyone else would stand in the way.
The Spartan army deployed against the Thebans was under the command of one of the two kings, Cleombrotus. Younger and newer to the throne than his colleague, Agesilaus, Cleombrotus never enjoyed the status or the successes of his elder. Cleombrotus was already in Phocis, the territory in central Greece containing Delphi, since he had been sent there in 375 to prevent Phocis from falling under Theban influence, as most of Boeotia had. With Cleombrotus were four of the six Spartan hoplite units, or morai, with an equivalent number of allies. Less imperialistic and aggressive than Agesilaus, Cleombrotus was often accused of being pro-Theban since he frequently had occasion to invade Theban territory but had never caused much damage. It was a reputation he would try to shed on this latest invasion of Boeotia.
Leuctra Map 1. Satellite image courtesy of the USGS.
The Spartans had their work cut out for them. The Theban army had always been strong, but by 371 in particular it had two commanders of tremendous ability and a peerless infantry unit. One of these commanders, Pelopidas, was the bold soldier and statesman who with Athenian aid had helped to liberate Thebes from its Spartan garrison in 379. Years after Leuctra, he died in battle after relentlessly attacking an enemy in Thessaly, heedless of his own safety. Pelopidas was in charge of a relatively new infantry unit called the Sacred Band, which was a corps of 300 elite soldiers who were continually trained for war at state expense. Theban hoplites had always been tough, but now the phalanx was anchored by a professional force that could execute complicated manoeuvres and fight regularly with distinction, just like Spartan hoplites. The soldiers in the Sacred Band, according to ancient sources, were supposedly comprised of 150 pairs of homosexual lovers. The idea behind this arrangement was that lovers would fight all the more valiantly in front of their beloved. Like their commander, the soldiers of the Sacred Band were renowned fighters. The unit only ceased to exist in 338 BCE when it heroically stood fast and died to a man against the overwhelming onslaught of Alexander’s cavalry charge at Chaeronea, recalling the stand of the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae a century-anda-half earlier.
The other commander was Epameinondas, a philosophically educated man who had recently risen to prominence in Thebes to be elected in 371 as one of the Boeotarchs, a board of seven federal officials and military leaders in Boeotia. He had also been, as we have seen, Thebes’ firebrand envoy to the peace conference of 371. Known as a thinker as well as a soldier, Epameinondas did more than anyone to make Thebes a hegemonic power in Greece while humbling Sparta in the process. As the Battle of Leuctra was to make clear to the world, Epameinondas was unconstrained by the tactical conventions of the hoplite phalanx. Throughout his military career, which included two major pitched battles and many smaller actions, he employed novel hoplite formations and made full use of cavalry and light-armed troops to supplement the hoplites. He also had strategic vision, and saw that humbling Sparta in battle, as powerful a symbol as that would be, needed to be followed up by destroying Sparta’s power base in the Peloponnese and therefore its capacity to make war. As events would reveal, Cleombrotus and the Spartans had more than met their match in the Theban military and its leaders.
For Cleombrotus, the natural route from Phocis into Boeotia was along the Kephissos valley, past Chaeronea and skirting Lake Kopais near Coronea. Between Coronea and the lake, which has been drained in the modern era, was a very narrow strip of land, ideal for defending the pass into Boeotia. It was here that Agesilaus had met the Thebans in the great Battle of Coronea in 394 (see previous chapter) as he made his way back to southern Greece from Asia Minor. Epameinondas stationed the majority of his army here, reckoning that Cleombrotus would follow Agesilaus’ route. To cover their bases, the Thebans made sure that smaller units guarded the passes over Kithairon, the mountain between Attica and Boeotia, which had also seen previous Spartan invasions, and the narrow and difficult routes over Mount Helikon, the massif forming Boeotia’s south-western border with Phocis. To Epameinondas’ surprise, Cleombrotus opted to bypass the Coronea route completely, instead marching into Boeotia over Helikon. Cleombrotus emerged from the mountain at Thisbe after slaughtering the Theban soldiers who had been stationed on these passes.
Cleombrotus then headed for the coast of the Corinthian Gulf, probably to open up better lines of communication with the Peloponnese. Leading his army around the precipitous coastal road, he arrived at the port of Kreusis, where he seized its fortifications and commandeered twelve triremes. From Kreusis, he marched north, again via a rocky and steep path, to arrive above the plain of Leuctra. Cleombrotus and the Spartans set up camp on the ridge to the south of the plain, leaving the road to Thebes along the Asopos River now dangerously exposed to the east. Learning that his defensive position had been turned, Epameinondas hurried with all speed to meet the Spartans, skirting the eastern side of Helikon and passing by Thespiae before encamping on the hills north of the Leuctra plain, opposite the Spartans. He was joined by the forces of a Boeotarch named Bacchylidas, who had been stationed on Kithairon. Only 2km now separated the armies of the Spartans and Boeotians. All that remained to be seen was whether either side had the stomach for a pitched battle.
Neither the Spartans nor the Thebans initially seemed particularly keen on a fight. According to the sources, Cleombrotus had to be coaxed into fighting by being reminded that if he failed to crush the Thebans, he would be severely punished at home. He had, after all, fallen under suspicion for being too lenient towards the Thebans in the past. Cleombrotus was suitably spurred by these words and grew eager to prove himself no friend of the Thebans. On the Boeotian side, despite Epameinondas’ urging, the Boeotarchs were divided on whether or not to join battle. Plutarch says that Pelopidas championed the cause of engaging the Spartans and was able to convince enough of the leaders to vote for battle. Pausanias relates a slightly different account in which Bacchylidas, when he joined the rest of the Boeotians after coming from Kithairon, provided the tie-breaking vote in favour of a fight.
As is usually the case with important battles, various omens and prodigies have been related by the literary sources. Epameinondas, despite some unfavourable initial signs, convinced his fellow Boeotians that various miraculous occurrences portended Boeotian victory. The temple of Heracles in Thebes, for example, was discovered to be empty of its sacred weapons, indicating that Heracles had armed himself for battle against the Spartans. Most powerfully, the plain of Leuctra was said to be the site where in ages past a group of Spartan envoys had raped some Theban girls, who nobly took their own lives after relating the outrage they had suffered. A curse had been levied against Sparta for this heinous deed, and a monument set up in the plain to these virgins. To signify their religious obligation to defeat the Spartans, therefore, the Thebans garlanded this monument before the battle. Despite some signs of reluctance, both sides now committed to stake everything on a battle in the plain.
Leuctra Map 2: Routes to the battle. Satellite image courtesy of the USGS.
There is some confusion in the sources about what happened in the battle itself. No single source offers a complete account of the battle, and one major source, Diodorus, contradicts the other accounts at several points regarding the movements before the battle and during the combat itself. He says that the Spartan phalanx marched against the Thebans in a crescent formation, which would be an unprecedented manoeuvre that makes little tactical sense. Xenophon, a contemporary of these events and an experienced soldier, mostly offers a set of reasons for why the battle went so badly for Sparta, essentially making excuses for his Spartan friends and patrons. Xenophon does give us some indication of how the forces were arranged and how the battle progressed, but his account is brief and wholly from the Spartan side. He fails even to name Epameinondas or Pelopidas, two figures of utmost importance for the Theban victory. Plutarch, in his biography of Pelopidas, covers the actual fighting in one brief chapter, but does offer some important details about the Theban formation and tactics. He does not, however, mention the cavalry in the battle, which played an important part in Xenophon’s account. Unfortunately, Plutarch’s life of Epameinondas, who was one of the biographer’s favourite subjects, has not survived. Despite these challenges, the battle was of crucial importance for the development of Greek warfare and the course of Greek history, and as such has been the subject of much scholarly attention. While disagreeing with one another on some points, military historians point to several important features of the Battle of Leuctra, and we can provide a general reconstruction.
First of all, the numbers of soldiers on each side is generally agreed to have been as follows. The Spartans and their allies had some 10,000 soldiers, give or take, including up to 1,000 cavalry. The actual Lacedaemonian contingent was somewhat less than half of the army, of which 700 were full Spartiates. The Boeotians had 6,000-7,000 hoplites, since 6,000 had been at Coronea with Epameinondas, and they were joined by those who had been guarding Kithairon. The Boeotians also had several hundred cavalry on their side. Though the Spartan army probably outnumbered the Boeotians, J.K. Anderson argues that the numbers of Thebans and Lacedaemonians were probably roughly equal, and these were the two forces that actually engaged one another and decided the battle. The Spartans’ numerical advantage, if they had one, was thus immaterial.
In terms of how the forces were arranged, the Lacedaemonians, who were placed in their traditional position on the right wing, were stacked no more than twelve soldiers deep, deeper than some phalanxes but not unheard of. The Thebans, on the other hand, including the 300 members of the Sacred Band, are said to have been stacked fifty deep, a staggering and unprecedented number, and twice that of the dense Theban phalanx that was so effective at Delium in 424 (see the earlier chapter on Delium). As J.F. Lazenby points out, arranged in this way, the Theban contingent would have presented a front of only some eighty soldiers, with the vast majority unable to reach the enemy with their spears. Another innovation at Leuctra was Epameinondas’ decision to arrange this deep formation on the left wing, immediately opposite the Spartans, instead of on the right where phalanx armies usually placed the best troops. Finally, Xenophon says that the Spartans placed their cavalry in front of the phalanx, perhaps to screen the movement of the Spartan hoplites, and the Boeotian cavalry were positioned to match them.
By all accounts, the battle did not go well for the Spartans. Xenophon says that before the two sides clashed, the Spartan forces were perhaps overeager from having just consumed wine with their midday meal. Mercenaries and allies from the Spartan side were sent to harass the Boeotian camp followers and other hangers-on whom Epameinondas had dismissed before battle was joined. The result of this action was no victory for the Spartans. Instead, the mercenaries and allied troops managed only to force these non-combatants back into the Boeotian camp, which swelled the ranks of the Boeotians and made the Boeotian army that much more dense, according to Xenophon. Xenophon also says that Cleombrotus, even before most of his army was ready to fight, sent the cavalry to engage the enemy. Unfortunately, the Boeotian cavalry were much more practiced and skilled, and made short work of the Spartan horse, sending them back into the Spartan lines to wreak havoc.
As the Boeotian infantry formed up for battle, Plutarch says that Epameinondas ordered the left wing, stacked fifty deep, to advance obliquely, that is, at a leftward angle across the plain in an attempt to draw the Spartan right away from the rest of the Spartan army. Regarding a similar tactic at the later Second Battle of Mantinea, Xenophon says that Epameinondas led his army prow-first, like a trireme about to ram its opponent, and ordered the Boeotian right wing to hang back and refuse battle against the Spartan left. No hoplite phalanx had ever attempted such a manoeuvre, and the Spartans seemed understandably perturbed. According to Plutach, when Cleombrotus saw the Thebans moving to the left, he tried to compensate by withdrawing some of his hoplites from the line to take up positions further to his right, perhaps attempting, as some scholars have suggested, to replicate the flank attack the Spartans had executed at Nemea over twenty years earlier (see the chapter on Nemea in this book). In that earlier battle, the Spartan phalanx had drawn its right wing out beyond the left wing of the enemy before wheeling left to smash the opposing hoplites from the side. At Leuctra, the Theban left, out on its own ahead of the rest of the Boeotians and presenting a narrow front due to the depth of its formation, seemed uniquely vulnerable to outflanking, a critical weakness for a traditional hoplite phalanx. Unfortunately for Cleombrotus, Epameinondas was not leading a traditional phalanx.
What happened next is difficult to visualize or comprehend, and it has occasioned some scholarly debate. Before the Spartans could complete whatever manoeuvre they were attempting, Plutarch says that Pelopidas and the Sacred Band rushed from their position at a run and rammed into Cleombrotus and the Spartan right, catching the Spartans unprepared and in disarray. While we know that the Sacred Band was the elite anchor of the Theban phalanx, we can’t tell whether they were stationed together at the front of the deep formation, or perhaps even in the rear, as some have suggested. Whatever the case, following up on Pelopidas’ bold charge the entire weight of the Theban formation now engaged the Spartans. The shock proved too much. Xenophon says that initially the Spartans, being the consummate soldiers, had the best of it in the hand-to-hand fighting despite the shock of the Theban attack. For evidence of this assertion, Xenophon adduces the fact that the Spartans were able to withdraw King Cleombrotus from the battle mortally wounded yet still alive. If the Spartans had been defeated right at the outset, Xenophon suggests, they would not have been able to recover their leader in good Homeric fashion. Be that as it may, Cleombrotus was nevertheless mortally wounded in the fight. It is no boon for any army to lose its commander in the action, and the rest of the Spartan wing was duly defeated soon after Cleombrotus fell. Seeing that the right wing and the king had been bested, the Spartan left withdrew from battle without ever coming to blows with the Boeotian right, which was still hanging back.
Spartan losses in this action were staggering: some 1,000 Lacedaemonians were killed. Most devastatingly, 400 of the 700 Spartiates lay dead on the field. By putting his best troops and formation against the flower of the Spartan army, Epameinondas had managed to kill a disproportionate number of the most hardened Spartan soldiers. These soldiers were by 371 in precious short supply because of Sparta’s rigidly stringent criteria for full Spartiate status. More than most Greek states, the Spartans would have a difficult time replacing such losses.
How was Epameinondas able to accomplish this astounding victory against Greece’s most revered hoplites? The 300 members of the Sacred Band, trained as professional soldiers at state expense and captained by the indomitable Pelopidas, certainly challenged Sparta’s monopoly on professional soldiers. But 300 were not enough to defeat nearly 5,000 Lacedaemonians, no matter how inspired their leadership or how fiercely they fought. The key to the Theban victory, as ancient and modern students of the battle agree, was in the fifty-deep phalanx. But how did this deep formation work, and how did it avoid being surrounded by the enemy and cut down from the flanks, exposed as it was well ahead of the rest of the Boeotians? At the heart of this question is the nature of the hoplite phalanx itself, in particular whether the mass-shove that happened when two armies collided was a literal shove, in which the rear ranks pushed against the men in front and the combined weight of the formation eventually broke the enemy formation. However, even if hoplites really did push against each other in battle, rugby-scrum style, it is still difficult to fathom that forty-nine ranks of soldiers could have pushed against the soldiers in the front rank.
Leuctra Map 3: The battle. Satellite image courtesy of the USGS.
A.M. Devine suggested that instead of fifty literal ranks arrayed in a solid rectangle, Epameinondas arranged his soldiers in a hollow wedge formation, much like the Greek letter lambda (Λ), which could penetrate the enemy lines like solid delta-shaped (Δ) cavalry wedges would later do, especially under Alexander the Great. Ingenious as this suggestion is, it has few defenders, and John Buckler wrote a convincing rebuttal in which he reasserted the orthodox opinion that the Theban left really was made up of fifty standard ranks of hoplites. In the end, unlike a charging horse at the apex of a wedge, followed by many other charging horses, a single or small number of hoplite soldiers at the point of an infantry wedge would fail to punch through the enemy. Instead, each individual hoplite along the side of such a wedge would be vulnerable to flank attack. In essence, instead of preventing outflanking, an infantry wedge would merely expose many small flanks to the enemy.
Though we can scarcely comprehend it today, deeper formations did seem to be effective in hoplite warfare. At Delium, the twenty-five deep Theban phalanx pushed back their Athenian enemy, and Thucydides’ account of that battle indicates a real, physical push. Would fifty ranks be twice as effective? It is impossible to know. But, for whatever reason – either because of literal pushing, increased morale and unit cohesion, or even the impossibility of the front ranks to withdraw or run away – Epameinondas’ deep formation broke the Spartan lines. Aside from the depth of the phalanx, that Epameinondas placed his best troops on the left, against Sparta’s own best troops, was also decisive. Phalanx battles often saw both sides win on the right and lose on the left, only to have the battle decided by whichever side held its right together better after the initial clash. According to such a scheme, the left wing was virtually sacrificed, serving only to prevent the right wing from being outflanked. Epameinondas violated this convention. Instead, as argued by the later tactical writer Polyaenus, if you crush the head of the serpent, the rest of the serpent is utterly useless. And Epameinondas did indeed crush the serpent’s head, by breaking the Spartan army at its strongest point and killing the king. To accomplish this result, Epameinondas not only put an unfathomably heavy formation on his left, he also used it as a shock weapon by striking at a precise point after advancing quickly at an angle and out in front of the rest of his army. Alexander the Great would later use his heavy cavalry in a similar way at the Granicus River. The speed and precision of Epameinondas’ manoeuvre, combined with the weight of the phalanx, won the Battle of Leuctra.
From their camp after the battle, according to Xenophon, many Spartans were eager to fight once again to recover their dead from the field. Cooler heads prevailed, however, and the Spartans appealed to the Thebans to be allowed to collect the bodies under a truce, thereby admitting formally that the Thebans had won and the Spartans had lost. When news of the defeat reached Sparta, the families of those who had been slain went about joyfully as the kinfolk of heroes, whereas those related to the survivors hid from view out of shame. Thus, to the last, Spartan militarism held firm. It would not be enough. Though Leuctra is remembered today as one of Greek history’s most decisive battles, at the time few in Greece took much notice. That soon changed when Epameinondas led an invasion of the Peloponnese itself and wrested from Spartan control the territories of Messenia and Arcadia, two crucial holdings that provided Sparta with much-needed manpower in the face of fewer and fewer Spartans. A strategic as well as tactical prodigy, Epameinondas founded the city of Messene as an independent capital for the Messenians whom the Spartans had used as helots for centuries. He also founded Megalopolis in Arcadia, bringing together another of Sparta’s subject populations. Sparta, the traditional great power of Greece, now found itself surrounded in its own territory by hostile and newly empowered peoples. Its prestige and military might never recovered.
Despite its brilliant beginnings, the supremacy of Thebes was short-lived. In less than ten years, Epameinondas, the architect and seeming sole-guarantor of Theban power, died fighting against the Spartans in the Second Battle of Mantinea (covered later in this book), despite achieving another tactical victory in the field. With him died his vision and acumen. But between Leuctra and Mantinea, from 371-362 BCE, Thebes was the most powerful state in Greece. Epameinondas has gone down in history as a soldier and statesman of the highest order, commanding nearly universal praise from ancient and modern commentators alike. Only Xenophon, who was as pro-Spartan as they come, refused to give the Theban general his due.
The Battle Site Today
The best place to begin a tour of the battle is from the trophy monument (N38° 15.885"; E023° 10.456"). Restored in the twentieth century, with new stone added to several ancient blocks found in situ, this trophy would have been established some time after the battle on the site of an ad hoc trophy set up immediately after the Theban victory. The stone hoplite shields on the permanent monument recall the real shields and other despoiled armour and weapons that would have made up the original trophy. Since trophies tended to be set up at the point where the enemy was turned to rout, this monument likely marks the very spot where Epameinondas and the Sacred Band, bolstered by fifty ranks of hoplites on the Theban left, killed Cleombrotus and crushed the Spartan right. The shields of slain Spartans made a tremendous prize for the Thebans, which they commemorated forever on stone.
The plain of Leuctra is not very expansive, extending westward from the trophy for only 2-3km before breaking up into hills. Strategically located along one of the main routes to Thebes and the heart of Boeotia from the west, Leuctra is positioned at the western end of the Asopos valley. In the plain, to the west of the trophy, would have been the Theban right and the Spartan left, two wings that never really engaged one another in the battle. The ridge of the modern village of Lefktra, to the south of the plain, marks the spot where the Spartans were encamped following their march from Kreusis. After their defeat in the battle, the Spartans withdrew to their camp, where they were protected by a good defensive position on the ridge and a trench that they had cut in front of the camp. On the northern hills, rising in the direction of Thespiae, the Thebans had set up their camp (N38° 16.686"; E023° 10.635") after hurrying from Coronea to check the Spartan advance after the Spartans had surprised them by entering Boeotia from the south. From the southern hills near the village of Lefktra, you can get a good view of the entire plain, giving you a sense of just how narrow the 1.5km plain between the northern and southern hills is.
Fig. 9.1: The reconstructed trophy at Leuctra. Authors’ photo.
Fig. 9.2: The battlefield, looking south from the Boeotian camp. Authors’ photo.
Fig. 9.3: The ancient walls of Kreusis. Authors’ photo.
After viewing the battlefield itself, you can get a sense of the rugged route into Boeotia by which the Spartans outmanoeuvred the Theban defensive position. Heading south, right through modern Lefktra, follow the signs for Livadostrata and the beach along the winding road to the coast. In order to accommodate motor vehicles, the modern road is less direct than the ancient one would have been, but still affords an excellent sense of the area’s topography. Lying on the Corinthian Gulf and in a good position to send and receive word from the Peloponnese across the water, Livadostrata has been identified as ancient Kreusis (N38° 12.429"; E023° 06.754"). At the western edge of the pleasant pebble beach are the impressive remains of the fortification walls and towers of Kreusis, a fine example of fourth-century BCE ashlar masonry. In order to surprise the Thebans by coming into Boeotia by an alternate route, the Spartan army arrived at Kreusis via the very rugged path along the coast to the south-west of the beach, skirting the imposing hills that seem to rise directly from the sea.
Further Reading
Ancient Sources
–Xenophon, Hellenica 6.3-4
The only surviving contemporary account of the battle, Xenophon focuses only on the Spartan perspective and offers a list of reasons for the Spartan defeat. He does not even mention Epameinondas in connection with the battle, and thus his account is seen as heavily biased and incomplete.
–Diodorus of Sicily 15.51-56
This first-century BCE universal historian offers a confused account of the battle in which the Spartans are described implausibly as leading a phalanx in a crescent-shaped formation. Where Diodorus differs from Xenophon, the latter is to be preferred.
–Plutarch, Pelopidas 20-24
A great admirer of Pelopidas and Epameinondas, Plutarch gives the fullest account of the battle from the Theban perspective. He also goes into a fair amount of detail regarding the Spartans’ tactics before and during the battle, though scholars debate to what extent Plutarch is accurate regarding the Spartan plans.
–Pausanias 9.13
This second-century CE travel writer adds certain important details to other accounts of the battle, especially that Epameinondas had ordered other passes into Boeotia, in addition to the pass near Coronea, to be guarded before the battle.
Modern Sources
Books
–Anderson, J.K., Military Theory and Practice in the Age of Xenophon (Berkeley, 1970).
A classic study of fourth-century BCE warfare, this volume offers a thorough treatment of the battle, especially its tactics, and a critical analysis of the ancient literary sources.
–Buckler, J., Aegean Greece in the Fourth Century BC (Leiden, 2003).
A thorough account of the battle and its historical context from a leading scholar of Greek history, and of Theban and Boeotian history in particular.
–Hanson, V.D., The End of Sparta: A Novel (New York, 2011).
Though strictly speaking not a work of academic history, this historical novel is written by a leading scholar of Greek warfare and offers an interesting and thoughtful perspective on the battle and its chief protagonist, Epameinondas.
–Lazenby, J.F., The Spartan Army (Warminster, 1985).
A detailed treatment of the battle from a leading military historian, with emphasis on questions of topography, tactics and sources.
–Pritchett, W.K., Studies in Ancient Greek Topography. Part I (Berkeley, 1965).
The starting point, as always, for any topographical investigation of Greek battlefields, Pritchett clarifies the questions surrounding where the battle was fought, and what route the armies took to get there.
Articles
–Buckler, J., ‘Epameinondas and the “Embolon”’, Phoenix 39 (1985), pp.134-43.
This article reasserts the orthodox view of scholars concerning Epameinondas’ novel infantry formation in the battle, namely that the Thebans were stacked in fifty literal ranks and advanced to the left in front of the rest of the army, like a ship’s ram.
–Devine, A.M., ‘EMBOLON: A Study in Tactical Terminology’, Phoenix 37 (1983), pp.201-17.
This piece offers an interesting, if unconvincing, suggestion that Epameinondas did not stack the Theban soldiers in fifty actual ranks, but rather instructed his army to form a hollow wedge formation to punch through the enemy lines.