CHAPTER 29
JOHN BUCKLER
WELL did Plutarch (Mor. 193E) describe his homeland of Boeotia as the “dancing-floor of war.” Throughout the classical period, from 479 to 338, the area witnessed at least nine major battles. That of Leuctra in 371 proved one of the most dramatic and decisive of the period, a major confrontation in which the famous Theban general Epaminondas broke the power of the justly fabled Spartan army. Today the very significance of the battle still remains the subject of scholarly controversy that demands renewed discussion. Included among the outstanding issues are precise details of the battle, their military importance, and its proper place in the history of Greek warfare. Thus Leuctra still remains a most fertile and instructive episode among the military conflicts of Greece.
Before discussing the battle itself, a brief note on sources is imperative. Xenophon (Hell. 6.4.4–15) provides the earliest account of the event, and he enjoyed the luxury of discussing it with some of the Spartan survivors and other informed men like Agesilaus. Yet he mars his account with outright lies, half-truths, misleading statements, and trenchant silences. Evidence for the first comes from his statement (6.4.9) that when the Spartan Hieron had driven the market vendors, baggage handlers, and others unwilling to fight back to their camp, they made the Boeotian army greater and more massive. In fact, these non-combatants never stood in the battle line. Another lie is his claim (6.4.8) that because the Spartans had drunk a little wine before the battle they were tipsy during the fighting, as though the Spartans had never before drunk wine. He blames the weak Spartan cavalry as though its defeat could account for the inability of the Spartan hoplites to stand against Epaminondas’s massed attack. He even claims that the Spartans were victorious at first because they could drag the wounded king Cleombrotus to safety. Such magnificent exploits do not win battles. Xenophon’s most notorious failure comes from his refusal to acknowledge that Epaminondas was the architect of Theban victory, even though he knew it. He likewise refuses to give due recognition to Epaminondas’s genius in mounting his victorious attack on his left wing. Yet here he gives himself away by admitting (6.4.12) that the Theban used his deep phalanx to overwhelm the king’s position. Both Xenophon (Lac.13.6) and Epaminondas knew that the Spartan king traditionally stood on his own right. Therefore the Theban could destroy it only by striking on his left. These examples suffice to prove Xenophon’s prejudices and his refusal to give a complete and fair account of Leuctra.
Other sources can be treated more briefly. Diodorus (15.53–56.3) relied on Ephorus, who according to Polybius (12.25f.3–4; cf. Meister 1975: 72–74) gave a confused report of the battle. Polybius adds that the encounter was actually a simple affair. Diodorus in turn muddled Ephorus’s work. Plutarch (Pel. 20–23) cogently used Xenophon, whom he supplemented with Callisthenes, Ephorus, and others (Georgiadou 1997: 15–28). Yet since Plutarch concentrates on the exploits of Pelopidas, matters not relevant to this theme are overlooked. Plutarch likewise says little in his life of Agesilaus, who did not participate in the battle. Other sources, namely Nepos (Pel. 4.2–3), Pausanias (9.13.3–10), and Polyaenus give some additional details of secondary importance. In sum, the sources combine to give an acceptable, comprehensible account of Leuctra.
THE BATTLE
In summer 371 the major Greek states concluded yet another Common Peace, but one that largely reflected Spartan ideas about the nature of that treaty. Especially for Agesilaus, the Spartan king, it meant the abolition of the Boeotian Confederacy and the emasculation of Theban power. The Thebans, however, under the determined leadership of Epaminondas, rejected the peace as nothing more than a legal pretext for renewed war. The Spartans had already prepared for this contingency. Even before the peace conference had convened, they had stationed their main field army across the border of western Boeotia. After the Thebans had refused one last chance to accept the peace, King Cleombrotus obeyed his orders from Sparta to invade Boeotia. The Common Peace had succeeded in spawning yet another war (Buckler 2003: 278–86). To Cleombrotus’s army the Spartans contributed four morai, or divisions, some 2,048 Spartans and other Laconians, of whom some 700 Spartiatai, or full Spartan citizens, served in the ranks. The Spartan complement formed one-tenth of the entire levy, the rest made up of various allies. The total strength of Cleombrotus’s army was some eleven thousand infantry and cavalry. Frequent campaigning between 378 and 371 had taken such a toll on the allies that many served with little enthusiasm. The realization that the recent peace actually brought only more war did not raise their morale. Spartan cavalry, never an inspiring arm of the army, was particularly weak in 371. As a final touch Spartans and allies alike had come to respect the tenacity and bravery of their Theban enemy (Buckler 1980b: 54–5, 289 nn. 14–15; Buckler 2003: 232–3).
Opposing the Spartans stood the army of the Boeotian Confederacy led by Theban officers. In theory this army numbered ten thousand hoplites and one thousand cavalry but at the time of the battle the Thebans marshaled only about seven thousand infantry and six hundred horse. Yet this army and its officers had honed their skills in seven years of fighting against Spartan forces. The Sacred Band formed an elite unit of the hoplite levy, one that invariably held the most dangerous place in the line. It consisted of three hundred men, all pairs of lovers who preferred to fight to the death rather than abandon their lovers and their post. It served under its own commanding officer. Pelopidas, who held the position at Leuctra, was a fiery, aggressive leader accustomed to acting independently. Cavalry served as the last and quite able arm of the Theban force which combat had made the finest in Greece. The Thebans had also strengthened their horsemen with hamippoi, light-armed infantrymen fast enough to accompany them in action. They were also equipped with javelins to bombard the enemy phalanx. The combination of veteran hoplites and fine cavalry gave the Theban army distinct advantages over the Spartans. Finally, the Theban army was about to serve under the overall command of Epaminondas, who would make his name at Leuctra, his first major military post. As boiotarchos he served as one of seven generals, but he surpassed his colleagues in intellect and natural authority. A veteran himself, he had also studied strategy and tactics. In the process he formed original ideas about combining new concepts with past experiences to win a truly decisive victory in the field (Buckler 1980b: 55).
Diplomacy having run its futile course, Cleombrotus began his invasion of Boeotia by marching past Chaeronea to Coronea, where he encountered the main Theban line of defense. Coronea sits squarely between Mount Helicon and Lake Copais, a formidable point that could not easily be turned. Rather than try, Cleombrotus retired as though abandoning the campaign. He then launched a brilliant flanking attack over Mount Helicon that left the southwestern plain of Boeotia open to him. Once there he marched up from the coast onto the small plain of Leuctra, not far from Thebes itself. Although his bold move caught the Thebans by surprise, they responded quickly by marching through Thespiae and onto a low line of hills bordering the northern side of the plain. The Thebans and Spartans looked out on a level expanse, some three-quarters of a mile broad. Open and virtually treeless, the land offered ideal ground for cavalry and maneuver.1
The two armies rested while their leaders were locked in dispute. Among the Thebans three of the boiotarchoi urged a retreat to Thebes, preferring to suffer siege than face the Spartans in open combat. Superstition, oracles, and baleful omens also stalked the Theban camp. Epaminondas allegedly played upon these religious fears by producing various omens and oracles predicting victory. One legend, however, enjoyed a historical basis. Two Spartans had once raped two virgins who in their shame committed suicide. Their helpless father could only curse the Spartans before the gods. Even at the time of the battle a monument to the girls stood on the field, which the Thebans piously decorated before the battle. The real secret of Theban morale, however, lay in the confidence of the army in its officers. When the seventh boiotarchos arrived and cast his vote with Epaminondas, the Thebans determined to give battle. Across the field the Spartan camp likewise suffered from disagreement and discord. His opponents accused Cleombrotus of wishing to avoid battle because he favored the Thebans. They did so even though he had done everything possible to gain a very favorable position for battle. Even his friends warned him that he could avoid exile only by engaging the enemy. The next morning after breakfast Cleombrotus called his last council to order the army to prepare for battle.2
The Thebans were at the moment making their own final preparations. The market vendors, baggage handlers, and the entire Thespian contingent began to leave camp. Epaminondas preferred to let these fellow Boeotians go rather than risk their desertion at the height of the fighting. Unbeknownst to them the Spartan Hieron had led a group of mercenaries around the Theban camp. He unexpectedly fell upon those leaving, driving them back to camp. Not only did Hieron fall in the skirmish, but his plan also failed, for these noncombatants did not participate in the coming battle.3 Despite the repulse of Hieron, Epaminondas allowed the Thespians to take refuge at Keressos. Cleombrotus afterward drew up his formation on the edge of the plain, his infantry some nine to ten thousand strong and eight hundred to a thousand cavalry in all. At first intending to conduct a typical hoplite battle, he arranged his phalanx in two wings with the Spartans on the right and the allies on the left. The Spartan contingent stood twelve deep in a line stretching perhaps some 2,500 feet. Cleombrotus took up his position on the right wing between the first and second morai, surrounded by the three hundred-man hippeis, a band of elite foot guard. The allies deployed accordingly on the left (Buckler 1980b: 290 n. 26).
As Epaminondas meanwhile massed his troops for battle, he unveiled his novel mode of attack. He placed his cavalry, doubtless accompanied by the hamippoi, in front of his phalanx to serve as the spearhead of attack. Pelopidas at the battle of Tegyra in 375 had already proven the ability of experienced cavalry to strike a telling blow against good hoplites. He next drew up the Thebans on the left wing opposite the Spartans, ranking them at least fifty shields deep and some seventy-five to eighty wide. He aimed his main blow specifically at Cleombrotus’s position in the line. The Theban formation, deep but narrow, thrust out from the line like the beak of a trireme. Epaminondas stationed the Sacred Band up front on his wing behind the cavalry. He kept it together as an integral unit, as Pelopidas’s charge soon demonstrated. He deployed the Boeotian troops on the right wing, probably drawn up eight or twelve deep (Buckler 1980b: 290 n. 27; see figure 29.1).
When Cleombrotus saw the novel and totally unexpected arrangement of Epaminondas’s army, he immediately realized the defects of his own dispositions. Without hesitation he began to change the deployment of his entire battle order. He moved his cavalry to the front to counter the Theban horsemen. Inadequate though they were, he hoped that they would at least distract the Thebans long enough for him to shift his infantry farther to the right. To prevent his own right wing from being outflanked he ordered his men to extend the line to the point where it stretched beyond the Theban left. Upon reaching that point, it could itself encircle Epaminondas’s striking wing. Units from the left of Cleombrotus’s own right wing faced about, stepped clear of the line, faced left, and, marching behind those still facing ahead, tried to move beyond its phalanx. Once there they were immediately to fall into line. In this way those hoplites still in line ahead protected those in motion. This movement suffered from the glaring weakness of opening a gap on the king’s left that the allied wing was supposed to close up. Furthermore, this maneuver was as complex as it was dangerous, as witnessed by the experience of the two Spartan polemarchoi at the battle of Mantinea in 418 (Thuc. 5.72.1; Plut. Pel. 23.1–4; Buckler 1980a: 79–83; Tuplin 1987: 72–107; Georgiadou 1997: 172–8).
To cover his evolutions Cleombrotus ordered his cavalry out into the plain to prevent Epaminondas from fathoming his intentions. Hoping thereby to buy time, he also began to move hoplites to his right. Although his riders closed with the Thebans, they immediately fell to the enemy. As they fled headlong, the Theban cavalry herded them back onto their own phalanx. Units of the Spartan line had already moved out of position and were even then marching behind their front. The gap thus opened was never closed. Spartan riders ploughed into and then through it, the Thebans at their hooves, preventing the allies from filling it. Nor could the Spartan hoplites in motion retrace their steps. All the while Epaminondas led his charge obliquely to the left, thus slanting across the enemy’s front. He accordingly drew Cleombrotus as far away as possible from the rest of his line. As intended, he concentrated on the king’s position to crush the head of the Laconian snake. The Boeotian right wing advanced in a somewhat refused order, while at the same time maintaining contact with the Theban lochoi on their left. The whole battle spread before Pelopidas’s eyes. He saw the open gap, Cleombrotus’s incomplete efforts to envelop Epaminondas, and the king isolated, his army in confusion. Seizing the moment, he ordered the band to charge forward to hit Cleombrotus’s position before he could restore the situation.4
Cleombrotus had run out of time. He ordered his line to advance. Even though the front ranks obeyed, the men in the rear did not even know that he was moving. Pelopidas slammed into Cleombrotus’s position, stopping all forward movement. Cleombrotus fell, mortally wounded, but the Spartans fought back heroically. They managed to drag the king off still alive, but their casualties mounted. Epaminondas now brought up his striking wing. The Thebans destroyed the king’s bodyguard, and when Epaminondas called for one more step to victory, his veterans broke all Spartan resistance. The Spartans left a thousand dead on the field, four hundred of whom were Spartiatai, first-line troops whom Sparta could not afford to lose. Epaminondas, with the redoubtable valor of Pelopidas and their veterans, had destroyed not only an army but also the myth of Spartan military invincibility.5
The enduring significance of Leuctra remains generally recognized. It ushered in the brief but portentous period of the Theban Hegemony, which saw the virtual exhaustion of the classical Greek polis system. So many states had vied for ascendancy with one another for so long that they in effect committed suicide. Philip and his successors buried the corpse. Though the polis survived until the end of antiquity, it lost its political primacy. In military terms too more powerful and more sophisticated armies replaced the old citizen levies of the polis. All of that still lay in the future. In 371 Leuctra served more as the end of the old than the harbinger of the new. That would soon come from Philip of Macedonia, who had spent some of his formative years in the Thebes of Epaminondas and Pelopidas, a king who fully appreciated the lessons of Leuctra.
ITS SIGNIFICANCE
Epaminondas’s stunning victory at Leuctra was due to his combination of seven military dispositions: 1) attack on the left wing; 2) deployment of hoplites in a very deep formation; 3) cavalry also stationed in depth; 4) cavalry positioned in front of the phalanx; 5) refused right wing; 6) reliance on the right wing to protect the right flank of the striking wing; and 7) use of the oblique attack for the entire army. Although other generals had used some of these features in previous engagements, none had both deployed them all simultaneously and also intentionally as essential parts of the entire battle plan. Understandably, then, no other ancient general had also thought to coordinate them. Still other ideas belonged solely to Epaminondas’s ingenuity and creativity. Many modern scholars have either failed to grasp the full dimension of Epaminondas’s plan and thus misrepresented it, or honestly misunderstood it. Some historians rightly point out that previous Greek generals had at one point or another used some of these features in their conduct of battles. Yet they do not also realize that circumstances in these cases forced commanders to take measures only because they could do nothing else. In these instances either through enemy surprise or the demands of topography these officers had to improvise their reactions to meet the particular situation. Yet in all these cases they only responded to developments initiated by others. None of them put into effect on the battlefield a plan devised before the engagement. Owing to these factors scholars have generally failed to perceive the full import of Epaminondas’s military achievements that day on the field of Leuctra.
Figure 29.1 Map of the battlefield of Leuctra. Original drawing by J. Buckler elaborated with reference to C. J. Tuplin in Talbert 1985: 59.
Taking the various features of Leuctra serially, the attack on the left wing provides a proper place to begin. No Greek general before Epaminondas had given the left wing of the phalanx the assignment before the battle to defeat decisively the entire enemy army. So never before had this concept found a place in anyone else’s plan. No one else had accordingly grounded his strategy on it to achieve total victory. The typical hoplite battle had consisted of the two generals placing their best troops on their right wing to confront the enemy’s left, the position held by his weaker troops. In the ensuing battle the right of each phalanx normally prevailed, resulting in something akin to a standoff. The side suffering the heavier losses asked for a truce to take up the fallen and that settled the matter. In a true military sense these battles were never decisive because the enemy army, while defeated, was never destroyed. Epaminondas, however, planned to throw the might of his finest troops against the Spartans themselves to kill as many of the Spartiataias possible. Before the battle he allegedly held up a snake for his men to see (Polyaenus, Strat. 2.3.15; Hanson 1988: 193–5). He told them that by crushing its head, he could kill the entire snake. Thus, by crushing the Spartiate head of the enemy phalanx, he would kill the entire army without striking a blow against the Spartan allies. Since the Spartans traditionally held the right wing of their own armies, deploying their weaker allies to their left, Epaminondas could crush that Spartan head only by ranking his elite Theban troops on his own left. Intent, not accident, determined his choice.
Turning next to the deep phalanx, Epaminondas’s use of it constitutes nothing new. Not fully realized, however, are either its roots or its full significance. On four occasions before Leuctra generals had intentionally deployed deep phalanxes before battle. In still another three instances commanders formed deep phalanxes in unplanned responses to unforeseen contingencies. The first of the four intended uses of it comes from the battle of Delium, where the Thebans first used it. In 424 the Athenian army under Hippocrates invaded Boeotia, striking as far west as modern Dhilesi on the northern coast. Quickly rallying to meet the threat, the Boeotians under the Theban boiotarchos Pagondas caught the Athenians in an upland valley at the site of the new settlement of Neo Sikamino. Across the valley the Athenians drew up their line eight deep, and against them Pagondas in turn ranked the Theban hoplites on his right twenty-five deep. After hard fighting, the Thebans were besting the Athenian left when panic swept through the whole Athenian army. The battle ended in Boeotian victory and heavy Athenian casualties (Thuc. 4.94–97; Andoc. 4.13; Diod. 12.70.1–5; Hanson 1988: 192, 196).
The Athenian invasion of Syracuse in 415 provides the next occasion for use of a deep phalanx. When the Athenians landed, they built a fortified camp at Daskon on the coast below Syracuse. They also established control over a level area around their camp. Against it the defenders sent their army, which took its position to the west of the camp. Completely unfamiliar with hoplite warfare, the Syracusans had never even fought a pitched battle before. To meet them the Athenians arrayed their forces in a battle line eight deep and a rear contingent also eight deep but deployed in a hollow square. The Syracusans drew up their line sixteen deep, perhaps in the hope that numbers alone would compensate for inexperience. Although the Syracusans put up a stout fight, the Athenians and their allied veterans prevailed. Once the Syracusans had gained combat experience, they never again resorted to the deep phalanx. Untrained hoplites, not the formation, had failed (Thuc. 6.66–70.1; Freeman 1892: 166–74; Hanson 1988: 193).
The end of the Peloponnesian War did not bring peace, as witnessed by the tumultuous events in Athens afterward. In 403, during the ensuing civil war, Thrasybulus, leading the men of the Piraeus, and Critias at the head of the Thirty, confronted each other in Mounychia. Thrasybulus arrayed his men ten deep to fill the street that led from the top of the hill down to the agora of Hippodamus. Limited space determined his deep formation, which in this case lent his inferior numbers a greater advantage than would more open ground. At the bottom of the hill Critias formed his superior force fifty shields deep to cover the same street. Upon Critias’s attack, Thrasybulus’s men easily drove the enemy downhill in frontal assault. At the foot of the hill the two sides made a truce. This clash was unique first in having two deep phalanxes involved, one unusually so. Next, it was obviously not a battle in the field but rather street fighting in a narrow land and between rows of houses. The two sides formed deep lines because only so could they bring all of their troops to bear. This unusual episode had no influence on subsequent military developments.6
The last example comes from the battle of the Nemea River in 394. There an allied army consisting of Boeotians, again under Theban leadership, Athenians, and other allies confronted the full Spartan levy of allied contingents under Aristodemus. The allies had voted before engaging to deploy their entire line sixteen deep. Defying their decision, the Thebans ranked their hoplites “altogether deep” (batheian pantelos), which probably means at least twenty-five as at Delium. The allies agreed that the Thebans should hold the right of the line, the Athenians the left, and the others the center. Against them the Spartans manned the right of the line with various allies filling in the rest of it. As the Thebans advanced, they inclined to the right, as was natural in hoplite battles (Thuc. 5.71), and easily drove their opponents from the field. The Spartans, likewise drifting to the right, overwhelmed the Athenians, and then wheeling about struck the exposed flanks of the Argives and then the Thebans as they returned from their own fighting.7 If the deep phalanx of the Thebans carried the day here, so on its side of the field did the Spartan line standing in the traditional depth of eight. Furthermore, the Spartans defeated the much deeper allied phalanx. Nemea River proved that the deep phalanx alone could not win a decisive hoplite victory. Epaminondas needed more than that to win total victory.
In the three other battles unexpected developments in the course of the action forced Greek generals to resort to the deep phalanx. Two of them certainly made an impression on Epaminondas. At the battle of Coronea in 394 the Thebans and their allies confronted the Spartans and theirs under Agesilaus on a narrow field. Both the Thebans and the Spartans routed those posted against them. As a result, the Thebans found the Spartans in their rear. Turning to confront Agesilaus, the Thebans saw before them very little room for maneuver. They accordingly concentrated their line on a narrow front, which meant deepening it. In this situation Agesilaus should have opened his phalanx to allow the Thebans to pass through. The Spartans could then have struck them in flank as they ran the gauntlet. The king instead turned to face them. When the two armies clashed, the Thebans in their thick, dense formation cut their way through the Spartan line, felling Agesilaus as they went. At that point the Spartans themselves opened their line to let the Thebans past.8 Through necessity, not design, did the Thebans win through at Coronea. Nor did the depth of the Theban phalanx alone decide the outcome of the battle.
The incident at Tegyra in 375, again an unforeseen conflict, indubitably influenced Epaminondas. The boiotarchos Pelopidas, his friend, with the three hundred hoplites of the Sacred Band and two hundred cavalry, unexpectedly fell in with a Spartan army of a thousand in two morai. At Tegyra, through a short, narrow gap, a true bottleneck, winds a road so narrow that it allows passage for only a few men abreast. Hence, when a handful of troops at a time debouched from it, they could only spread slowly onto the confined area on its western side. As Pelopidas approached the spot, he encountered the unsuspecting Spartans emerging from it. With no time to form an elaborate plan and before the enemy could fully deploy, he drew up his infantry into a dense formation (eis oligon) for an immediate attack. On a short front that meant deepening the line. Terrain, time, and scant numbers prevented him from forming an extended line. The same limitations restricted Spartan movements. Upon striking the Spartan line, Pelopidas at the head of a tough knot cut his way through the enemy in fierce fighting. Here the dense phalanx combined with a determined leader, a surprised enemy, and confined space all culminated in Pelopidas’s victory. Yet Tegyra was a skirmish rather than a major battle, and the lessons drawn from it were somewhat limited.9
The last example, which dates to the Peloponnesian War, had nothing to do with Thebes. In 432 the Corinthian general Aristeus at Potidaea defeated one wing of an Athenian line. Pursuing the enemy for some distance, he discovered that the rest of the Athenian army remained intact behind him. The narrow peninsula at this point allows little room for maneuver. Aristeus quickly concentrated his hoplites into the smallest space possible and next led it against the enemy. After heavy fighting, his wing broke through the Athenian line. Like Pelopidas at Tegyra, through necessity he contracted his men into a short front and deep ranks (Thuc. 1.62.5–63.1; Gomme 1:199–200). In all three of these cases the combination was forced upon the commanders by circumstances, not by choice, but victory resulted in them all.
For Epaminondas’s deployment of cavalry in depth only Tegryra provides a precedent. There, as seen, topography dictated the tactical necessities of battle. The confined ground there allows little room for broad deployment. The sudden encounter surprised both armies, but Pelopidas reacted first. Drawing his cavalry into a compact mass, he threw them against the Spartans before they could properly debouch into the open. Neither was this a premeditated attack nor was it coordinated with a simultaneous hoplite attack. Greek history affords no other example of such a massed cavalry attack in tactical conjunction with infantry.
The next two topics, cavalry stationed in front of the phalanx and its use as a striking force, can most usefully be discussed together. Before doing so, however, a word is needed about cavalry serving as an integral part of an initial hoplite attack. Greek history provides not one example of any such thing. At Tegyra Pelopidas ordered his cavalry from the rear to assail the Spartans before they could form their line (Plut. Pel. 17.3). As seen, he did so to buy time for him to deploy the Sacred Band, not to act in concert with it in a hoplite attack. Nonetheless, Hanson (1988: 196) claims such an attack at the Paktolos River in 395 (Xen. Hell. 3.4.22–24). When Agesilaus moved on Sardis, he ordered his cavalry to confront Tissaphernes’s horsemen, who lacked all infantry support. The Spartan cavalry did so with their infantry shortly coming up behind. Since the Persian horse faced Agesilaus’s attack entirely alone, they could not hold. This episode, then, was neither a set battle nor a joint attack launched in unison. Therefore, it cannot support Hanson’s claim, which must be dismissed (Buckler 2003: 66–8).
Epaminondas’s deployment of cavalry at Leuctra throws surprising light not only on a significant aspect of the battle but also on Xenophon’s duplicitous account of the battle itself. Xenophon (6.4.10) simply states “since there being a plain between them, the Spartans posted the cavalry in front of their phalanx and the Thebans theirs against them.” This statement is all the more insidious because of its apparent innocence. Xenophon does not in fact say that Cleombrotus acted first, even though Hanson and others have drawn that conclusion.10 Xenophon (6.4.10–15) narrates the action from the Spartan side: deployment of cavalry and then infantry, Cleombrotus’s advance and supposed initial success, Spartan collapse under Theban attack, and losses, depicting in turn some of the Theban movements. Seen in this light, it is no more logical to conclude that the Thebans posted their cavalry in front of their lines because the Spartans did so than that they ranked their phalanx fifty deep because the Spartans ordered theirs twelve deep. Although Xenophon implies the parallel regarding cavalry, the facts actually argue against it.
To prove the point, a dispassionate look at the situation demonstrates that Cleombrotus had absolutely no reason to station his cavalry in front of his phalanx before the battle and many not to do so. Xenophon (6.4.10–11) expatiates on the pitiful state of Spartan horsemen. This cavalry, despised and useless, hardly constituted a fit instrument of offense. Deployment of it in front of his line would only have fouled the field for his main attack. He originally planned a typical hoplite battle, as proven by his initial disposition of his phalanx. That typical battle formation included cavalry on the flanks. The first sight of Epaminondas’s massive formation—infantry and cavalry—across the field changed everything. In the face of the Theban dispositions Cleombrotus began to change the formation of his phalanx to lengthen it. Plutarch (Pel. 23.2) perfectly understood the situation, and to fill Xenophon’s silence explains how the king tried to extend his line. Plutarch too omitted the Theban cavalry because his subject was the life of Pelopidas, who served on foot with the Sacred Band. As part of this general redeployment Cleombrotus now ordered his cavalry to the front to shield his movements. That urgent necessity clearly explains Spartan cavalry in front of its own phalanx. Cleombrotus moved it from the flanks to buy time to re-form his entire line. Seen in this light, all of Cleombrotus’s last-minute movements make sense as a desperate response to a totally unexpected challenge.
Epaminondas by contrast had ample reason to mass his horsemen and put them in his front. Pelopidas at Tegyra had provided him with good reasons. Although Epaminondas could not expect his riders to pierce an unbroken phalanx, he could rely on them to hold the field in front of the Spartan line. They could distract it and possibly interfere with its movements (see also Xen. Eq. mag. 8.12). All the while his own hoplites would be more closely approaching the Spartan phalanx. That much had happened at Tegrya, and Xenophon himself (An. 3.2.18–19) had once warned his men to disregard cavalry threats. When Cleombrotus placed his horsemen in his front, he unwittingly gave the Theban cavalry an unexpected but most welcome opportunity to upset his entire redeployment. Although Epaminondas could not have predicted this turn of events, his cavalry made excellent use of their opportunity. His riders were far too experienced to allow the enemy to escape around the flanks of their line. Instead, having met the Spartans, they drove them back onto their own phalanx. Cleombrotus’s incomplete extension of his line had left a gap in it. As usual in such cases, the fleeing Spartan cavalry made straight for it with the Thebans right behind them (Xen. Hell. 6.4.13; Tarn 1930: 62–3).
Two of Epaminondas’s innovations have sparked considerable but unnecessary confusion. The first is the purpose and function of the refused right wing and next its erroneous identification as a reserve. The two must therefore be dismissed together. Diodorus (15.55.2) is largely responsible for the misinterpretation of the role of Epaminondas’s right wing. He states that Epaminondas placed his weakest hoplites on the right with orders to avoid battle by withdrawing gradually during the enemy’s attack. The two are mutually contradictory, for not even Epaminondas could order them simultaneously to advance while retiring. The veteran Xenophon (Hell. 7.5.22, 24) provides the answer when he describes Epaminondas’s line at Mantinea in 362. He states that the Theban’s left wing thrust forward like a ram (Buckler 1985: 134–43). The whole line advanced like a trireme with the left forming the ram. That means that Epaminondas’s left thrust ahead while maintaining contact with the right. Both advanced together in an unbroken line. The front of the right, however, was behind that of the left, the whole formation being in echelon. The right could also be described as refused. Even though Epaminondas committed it to battle from the outset, he did not intend for it to participate in the fighting—unless necessary—until later in its course.
Next, the purpose and function of the Boeotian right wing, both often misunderstood, merit attention. First, it played a crucial, if unappreciated, role in the battle. Nor were its men the weakest in the army, as Diodorus calls them. The right wing served primarily to protect the vulnerable right flank of Epaminondas’s striking wing. His deep formation with its narrow front was itself exposed to attack on its own right, all the more so since the Spartan line stretched well beyond it. Yet so long as the Boeotian right wing confronted the enemy, they could not wheel against Epaminondas without exposing their own left flank. If they tried, they would themselves be rolled up. Until they had dealt with the Boeotian right, the Spartans could not threaten Epaminondas’s wing. The Boeotian right thus served from the outset of the action as a safeguard and a deterrent. Though its role could perhaps be considered secondary, it could never rightly be called unimportant (so Hanson 1988: 194–5; Lendon 2005: 107).
Several scholars have erroneously called the Boeotian right a reserve, and by so doing they have only unnecessarily clouded the issue.11 A reserve is by definition “troops withheld from action to reinforce others or to cover retreat” and “forces to be called on in an emergency” (New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1993) s.v. “reserve;” Holladay 1982: 96 n. 13). As the Boeotian right wing served on the battlefield from the start of action and continued throughout, it cannot fit the definition. Yet Hanson (1988: 196) mistakenly argues that something of this sort actually happened at Delium, when he claims that Pagondas “ordered a reserve contingent of horsemen to ride out in support of his crumbling left wing.” Quite to the contrary, when the Boeotians and Athenians were already engaged, Pagondas detached two squadrons of cavalry from their original position in the line with orders to circle a hill and confront the Athenians (Thuc. 4.96.5). Having already been deployed against the enemy, Pagondas’s horsemen were not by any definition a “reserve.” Nor should the notion be applied to the Boeotian wing at Leuctra.
In conclusion, Epaminondas’ achievement at Leuctra has merited this thorough reevaluation, all the more so since a great many scholars currently reduce the Theban’s thinking to the commonplace. Typical is the recent judgment of E. L. Wheeler, who opines that Hanson “ably explodes the myth of Epaminondas’s innovation” (2007: lxiv, yet see Buckler 2003: 293 n. 56). The latter does so, as seen here, only by a combination of historical errors, false analogies, and the failure to recognize Epaminondas’s ability to combine his original ideas with past military lessons of proven effectiveness. As amply demonstrated, Epaminondas actually recognized a new capacity in the striking power of cavalry, if properly used within its limitations. He readily appreciated the fundamental weakness of traditional hoplite warfare in the inability of two strong wings to win a decisive battle by defeating the enemy’s weak wing. He solved the problem by the concept of attacking on the left with his full might, a solution as brilliant as it was simple. In terms of tactics he knew that an oblique attack leftward by his strong wing would both counter the natural drift of the enemy farther to the right and threaten to separate it from the rest of its line. He understood the need for a refused right wing to defend the striking wing and to fix the attention of the unengaged enemy wing. Taken together, Epaminondas’s designs at Leuctra incorporated the traditional and the novel as never before. Thus no one can or should claim that everything he did was original. That misses the full import of his achievement. His plans worked but not always as expected. He could not have predicted Cleombrotus’s cavalry response and certainly not the fouling of its own main line. Nor could he have necessarily foreseen Cleombrotus’s last minute effort to extend his phalanx. These were unintended but welcome results of his brilliant and unorthodox thinking. He combined all of these elements, the planned and the unplanned, to make Leuctra a unique victory in Greek military history.
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