The Historians' History of the World 04

After he had led them out thus prepared, it is well to consider how he acted. First of all, as was to be expected, he drew up his forces, and in doing so appeared to give manifest indications that he was preparing for a battle. When his army however was drawn up as he wished, he did not lead it the shortest way towards the enemy, but conducted it towards the mountains on the west and over against Tegea—so as to produce a notion in the enemy that he would not fight that day; for when he came near the hills, after his main body was drawn out to its full extent, he ordered his men to file their arms at the foot of the heights, so that he appeared to be encamping. By acting in this manner, he slackened the determination for engaging which was in the hearts of most of the enemy, and caused them to quit their posts on the field. But when he had brought up to the front the companies which on the march had been in the wings, and had made the part in which he was posted strong and in the shape of a wedge, he immediately gave orders for his troops to resume their arms, and began to advance, while they followed him. As for the enemy, when they saw the Thebans advancing, contrary to what they had expected, not one of them could remain quiet, but some ran to their posts, some formed themselves in line, others bridled their horses, others put on their breastplates; yet all were more like men going to suffer some harm than to inflict any on others.

Epaminondas led on his army like a ship of war with its beak directed against the enemy, expecting that wherever he assailed and cut through their ranks he would spread disaster among their whole force; for he was prepared to settle the contest with the strongest part of his troops; the weaker he had removed to a distance, knowing that if they were defeated they would cause dismay among his own men and confidence in the enemy. The enemy, on their part, had drawn up their cavalry like a body of heavy-armed infantry, of a close depth, without any foot to support them; but Epaminondas, on the contrary, had formed of his cavalry a strong wedge-like body, and had posted companies of foot to support them, judging that when he had broken through the cavalry of the enemy, he would have defeated their whole force, since it is hard to find men that will stand when they see some of their own party in flight; and that the Athenians might not send succour from their left wing to the part of the enemy nearest them, he posted over against them, upon some high grounds, parties of horse and heavy-armed foot, wishing to inspire them with the apprehension that if they stirred to aid others his own troops would attack them in the rear.

Such was the mode in which he commenced the engagement; nor was he deceived in his expectations; for, being successful in the part on which he made his attack, he forced the whole body of the enemy to take to flight. But when he himself fell, those who survived him could make no efficient use of their victory; for though the main body of the enemy fled before them, his heavy-armed troops killed none of them, nor even advanced beyond the spot where the charge took place; and though the cavalry also retreated, his own cavalry did not pursue, or make any slaughter either of horse or foot, but, like men who had been conquered, slipped away in trepidation amidst their fleeing adversaries. The other parties of foot, indeed, and the peltasts, who had shared in the success of the cavalry, advanced up to the enemy’s left wing, as if masters of the field, but there the greater part of them were put to the sword by the Athenians.

When the conflict was ended, the result of it was quite contrary to what all men had expected that it would be; for as almost the whole of Greece was assembled on the occasion, and arrayed in the field, there was no one who did not suppose that, if a battle took place, one side would conquer and be masters, and the other be conquered and become subjects; but the divine power so ordered the event, that both parties erected trophies as being victorious, neither side hindering the other in the erection; both parties, as conquerors, restored the dead under a truce, and both parties, as defeated, received them under truce; and neither party, though each asserted the victory to be its own, was seen to gain any more, either in land, or towns, or authority, than it possessed before the battle took place. Indeed there was still greater confusion and disturbance in Greece after the conflict than there had been before it.c

GROTE’S ESTIMATE OF EPAMINONDAS