The Historians' History of the World 04

Scarcely any character in Grecian history has been judged with so much unanimity as Epaminondas. He has obtained a meed of admiration—from all, sincere and hearty; from some, enthusiastic. Cicero pronounces him to be the first man of Greece. The judgment of Polybius, though not summed up so emphatically in a single epithet, is delivered in a manner hardly less significant and laudatory. Nor was it merely historians or critics who formed this judgment. The best men of action, combining the soldier and the patriot, such as Timoleon and Philopœmen, set before them Epaminondas as their model to copy. The remark has been often made, and suggests itself whenever we speak of Epaminondas, though its full force will be felt only when we come to follow the subsequent history—that with him the dignity and commanding influence of Thebes both began and ended. His period of active political life comprehends sixteen years, from the resurrection of Thebes into a free community, by the expulsion of the Lacedæmonian harmost and garrison, and the subversion of the ruling oligarchy—to the fatal day of Mantinea, 379-362 B.C. His prominent and unparalleled ascendency belongs to the last eight years, from the victory of Leuctra, 371 B.C. Throughout this whole period, both all that we know and all that we can reasonably divine, fully bear out the judgment of Polybius and Cicero, who had the means of knowing much more. And this too, let it be observed, though Epaminondas is tried by a severe canon; for the chief contemporary witness remaining is one decidedly hostile. Even the philo-Laconian Xenophon finds neither misdeeds nor omissions to reveal in the capital enemy of Sparta—mentions him only to record what is honourable, and manifests the perverting bias mainly by suppressing or slurring over his triumphs. The man whose eloquence bearded Agesilaus at the congress immediately preceding the battle of Leuctra—who in that battle stripped Sparta of her glory, and transferred the wreath to Thebes, who a few months afterwards, not only ravaged all the virgin territory of Laconia, but cut off the best half of it for the restitution of independent Messene, and erected the hostile Arcadian community of Megalopolis on its frontier—the author of these fatal disasters inspires in Xenophon such intolerable chagrin and antipathy, that in the first two he keeps back the name, and in the third, suppresses the thing done. But in the last campaign, preceding the battle of Mantinea, whereby Sparta incurred no positive loss, and where the death of Epaminondas softened every predisposition against him, there was no such violent pressure upon the fidelity of the historian. Accordingly, the concluding chapter of Xenophon’s Hellenica

contains a panegyric, ample and unqualified, upon the military merits of the Theban general; upon his daring enterprise, his comprehensive foresight, his care to avoid unnecessary exposure of soldiers, his excellent discipline, his well-combined tactics, his fertility of aggressive resource in striking at the weak points of the enemy, who content themselves with following and parrying his blows (to use a simile of Demosthenes) like an unskilful pugilist, and only succeed in doing so by signal aid from accident.

[379-362 B.C.]

The effort of strategic genius—then for the first time devised and applied, of bringing an irresistible force of attack to bear on one point of the hostile line, while the rest of his army was kept comparatively back until the action had been thus decided—is clearly noted by Xenophon, together with its triumphant effect, at the battle of Mantinea; though the very same combination on the field of Leuctra is slurred over in his description, as if it were so commonplace as not to require any mention of the chief with whom it originated. Compare Epaminondas with Agesilaus—how great is the superiority of the first—even in the narrative of Xenophon, the earnest panegyrist of the other! How manifestly are we made to see that nothing except the fatal spear-wound at Mantinea prevented him from reaping the fruit of a series of admirable arrangements, and from becoming arbiter of Peloponnesus, including Sparta herself!