Epaminondas
Epaminondas was the Theban general who broke Spartan military supremacy and, in doing so, ended the system that had dominated Greece for two centuries. Born in Thebes around 418 BC to a family of good descent but no money, he was educated by the Pythagorean philosopher Lysis of Tarentum and was noted for asceticism and for indifference to wealth, which was unusual enough that his contemporaries commented on it. Sparta had seized the Theban citadel in 382 BC. After it was retaken in 379 BC, Epaminondas and his friend Pelopidas rebuilt Boeotian power, and Pelopidas commanded the Sacred Band, a picked unit of 150 pairs of male lovers. At Leuctra in 371 BC he faced a larger Spartan-led army. Instead of the conventional line of roughly even depth advancing straight ahead, he massed his best troops fifty ranks deep on his left — opposite the Spartan king and his best men — refused his weaker right, and attacked in echelon so that the strengthened wing struck first. The Spartan right broke, King Cleombrotus was killed, and around 400 of the 700 Spartiates present died. It is one of the first recorded uses of deliberate concentration of force at a chosen point, and Philip of Macedon, a hostage in Thebes as a youth, learned from it. He then invaded the Peloponnese and did the lasting damage: he freed Messenia, whose helots had fed Sparta for three centuries, and founded Messene and Megalopolis as fortified counterweights. Sparta never recovered economically. He was killed at Mantinea in 362 BC while winning another victory, and Theban ascendancy died with him.
- Lived: 418 BCE – 362 BCE
- Nationality: Greek (Theban)
- Roles: general, statesman
