Epaminondas. Famous Greek general and politician, his tactical methods in warfare led Thebes to dominate ancient Greece .
Summary
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- 1 Biographical synthesis
- 1 Childhood and youth
- 2 Military career
- 3 Death
- 2 Legacy
- 3 Source
Biographical synthesis
Childhood and youth
He was born in Thebes, capital of the Boeotian confederation. He was educated by Lysis of Tarentum, a philosopher of the school of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras . In 371 BC Epaminondas represented Thebes in the peace conference of the Greek city-states in Sparta , where he refused to agree to the Spartan proposal to grant autonomy to the cities of Boeotia that Thebes controlled.
Military career
His position provoked hostilities between Thebes and Sparta. As commander of the Theban troops, Epaminondas delivered a crushing defeat to the Spartans at Leuctra that same year, initiating the military hegemony of Thebes among the city-states of Greece. The victory was due almost entirely to the new tactics of the Theban fighting methods devised by Epaminondas. In 370 BC he invaded and attacked Sparta, liberating Messinia from Spartan rule. Under the leadership of Epaminondas, Megalopolis was founded as the capital of the Arcadia League, a political and military confederation of the city-states of central Peloponnese. Between 368 and 366 BC, he led two more attacks on the Peloponnese. In 362 BC, he waged a fourth and final campaign, this time against the newly formed league, among others, by Sparta and Athens. Using the tactics he had tried so effectively on Leuctra, Epaminondas seemed to be repeating his success in the fields of Mantinea.
Death
Epaminondas was struck in the chest by a spear, mortally wounded in this last battle, but knowing that the defeated enemy was fleeing, he exclaimed: “He left behind me my two daughters, Leuctra and Mantinea, my victories.” In accordance with Greek custom, he was buried on the same battlefield.
Legacy
In a way, Epaminondas dramatically altered the face of Greece in the 10 years in which he was the central figure in politics. At the time of his death, Sparta had been beaten and shaken, Messinia had been liberated, and the Peloponnese had been completely reorganized. From another point of view, however, he left behind a Greece not very different from the one that existed before: the enmities and bitter differences that had poisoned relations between the polis for centuries were still as deep or deeper than they had been before. by Leuctra.
The brutal warfare between the different factions that had existed since the Peloponnesian War and until then continued the same, until the rise of Macedonia as the main military power ended it forever.
At Mantinea, Thebes faced the combined forces of the largest Greek states, but victory brought no advantage. With Epaminondas out of the picture, the Thebans reverted to their traditional defensive politics, and a few years later Athens replaced them in the leadership of the Greek political system. No Greek state returned to subdue Boeotia in the same way it had been subdued during Spartan hegemony, but the influence of Thebes quickly faded into the rest of Greece. Finally, at the Battle of Cheronea, the combined forces of Thebes and Athens, together in a desperate attempt to hold out against Philip of Macedon.They were overwhelmingly defeated, and the independence of Thebes came to an end. Three years later, driven by a false rumor that Alexander the Great had been assassinated, the Thebans rebelled, and Alexander crushed the revolt and destroyed the city, massacring or reducing all its citizens to slavery. Only 27 years after the death of the man who had made it preeminent in all Greece, the city of Thebes was wiped off the face of the earth. Their millennium-long story ended in just a few days