The Historians' History of the World 04

[13] [Grote says: “To the discredit of Xenophon, Epaminondas is never named in his narrative of the battle, though he recognises in substance that the battle was decided by the irresistible Theban force brought to bear upon one point of the enemy’s phalanx; a fact which both Plutarch and Diodorus expressly referred to the genius of the general.”]

[14] [σκυταλισμός—from the weapon (σκυτάλη) a club which seems to have been principally used.]

CHAPTER XLVI. WHEN THEBES WAS SUPREME

JOINT WORK OF EPAMINONDAS AND PELOPIDAS

The Thebans had every inducement to husband their strength and guard their commonwealth against civil divisions, for the number of their adversaries increased with their good fortune. If they could look back with pride on what had been accomplished, still their future was by no means secure. They had indeed baffled the unjustifiable designs of their enemies. The Spartans, who eighteen months before had cherished the hope of decimating the divided Thebans for the benefit of the god, were now reduced to complete impotence, while they were threatened by the Thebans with almost the same fate by which the latter had themselves been confronted; the foundation of a city which offered a safe refuge to all oppressed and outlawed inhabitants of Laconia, had inflicted a mortal wound on the ruling Dorian state; the annihilation of the Peloponnesian league had permanently broken the Spartan supremacy.

But the very rapidity with which the fetters had been shaken off had created many difficulties which the Thebans had to face when they came to reunite the dismembered limbs into a new whole. The hegemony of Sparta, like that of Athens, rested on the foundation of ancient popular tradition; each had its justification in the eminent qualities of the respective states, in the exclusive military training and bravery of the Spartans, in the cultivation and democratic judicial life of the Athenians; all the Greek commonwealth had been pledged to one or the other of these states for a shorter or longer period; consequently subordination to one of them was no disgrace to any town, since the ancestors of its inhabitants had already stood in a similar relation.

The position was quite different in the case of Thebes, which neither by her historical past, nor by the greatness and importance of her intellectual and moral progress and civil institutions, seemed justified and qualified for the assumption of so eminent a position. Much as the Peloponnesians admired the bravery, the discipline, and the excellent disposition of the Theban troops, their military reputation was too recent to allow of its measuring itself in the eyes of the Hellenes with the glory of Sparta’s arms and her military practice; and yet warlike courage and bodily dexterity were the only merits which the Thebans could bring forward to support their claim to supremacy in Hellas. They had neglected navigation, though the favourable situation of the country, with its extensive coast on both shores and the excellent roadsteads, especially at Aulis, offered many advantages; they had at all times shown a disinclination and contempt for commerce and industry, and were consequently often in distress for money; in intellectual and artistic progress, they had not only remained behind Athens and the Hellenes of Asia Minor, but the Dorian states of Sparta, Corinth, Sicyon, and Ægina had also developed a richer culture; the composition of lyrics and the art of playing on the flute were the only accomplishments in which the Bœotians had attained to any skill.

The sense of justice and humanity were little cultivated; savage and cruel in their disposition, they pursued their enemies and their rivals with bloodthirsty passion, so that on his second expedition into the Peloponnesus Epaminondas only saved a number of aristocratic fugitives from Bœotia from an agonising death by denying their origin. Beside this, the inclination of the Thebans to sensual pleasures and their delight in luxurious feasts and banquets, formed a striking contrast to Athenian simplicity and moderation, and to the stern and joyless lives of the Spartans.

It has been already remarked that Epaminondas was free from all these defects and vices and did all in his power to remove them; but he stood so far above his fellow-citizens that his influence was diminished by that very fact. Judging his countrymen by himself, and assuming in them the same virtue and morality, the same enthusiasm for the glory and greatness of their native land as he felt in his own great soul, he drew them into undertakings to which neither their strength nor their capacity was equal; he entered on courses which they, with their defective political training, could not pursue with safety. Consequently it has been justly said that with the corpse of Epaminondas the glory of Thebes was also carried to the grave.