Battle of Mantineus (362 BC)

After the battle of Levctra in 371 BC. e. undermined the foundations of the hegemony of Sparta, Theban political leader and commander Epaminondas attempted to create a new hegemony - already around his polis. To this end, the Theban army, mainly with the Phocians and Thessalians, went to the Peloponnese, uniting with its allies, mainly with the Arcadians, Argives and Eleists. The allies convinced the Theban leader to invade Laconic , pointing to the small number of Spartans. With an approximately seventy-thousand-strong army, Epaminondas made a campaign in Laconic, ruining it. Because of the stubborn resistance of the Spartans led by Agesilaus, Epaminondas could not capture Sparta itself.

After a series of trips to the Peloponnese, Epaminondos seized Messenia from Sparta, organized the Arcadian Union (a federation of city states in the central part of the Peloponnese Plateau) and founded the city of Megalopol in the south of Arcadia in order to limit the influence of Sparta on the Peloponnese and to ensure that this territory completely passes under the control of Thebes.

A few years before the battle of Mantinea, the Spartans, led by their son Agesilaus Archidamus, won a major battle over the Arcadians and Argivians (the battle was called Tearless, as according to legend, no Spartans died in this battle), and also made an alliance with Aeolians , who had territorial claims against the Arcadians ), in an attempt to undermine the influence of the union. When once the Arcadians miscalculated and captured the all-Hellenic shrine - the temple of Zeus at Olympia , one of the Arcadian city-states, Mantinea , separated from the union. The Spartans and Aeolians teamed up with the Mantines for a military attack on the Arcade Union. Athens decided to support the Spartans, because they did not want to calmly look at the growth of the power of Thebes. The Athenians also recalled that when at the end of the Peloponnesian war the Thebans demanded the destruction of Athens and the conversion of all the inhabitants of the city into slaves, Sparta rejected these demands. The Athenian army, allocated to help forces united under the leadership of the Spartans, was sent by sea - so as not to be intercepted by the Thebans on land. Then Epaminondos led the Theban army to the Peloponnese, in order to try to re-establish the Theban-Arcadian hegemony here.

Two armies met at Mantinea in the summer of 362 BC. e. . A selected, elite part of the Theban army, headed several days earlier by Epaminondas personally, attacked Sparta itself when the majority of the Spartans , led by their king Agesilaus , were on a march to Arcadia . Despite the surprise of the attack and the numerical superiority, the Boeotians were defeated and retreated.

In the battle for Sparta, the young Spartan warrior Isad distinguished himself, who fought in the thick of the enemies completely naked and smeared with oil, held a sword and a spear in his hands, defeated everyone who decided to fight him. After the battle, the hero was not even injured. The "culprit" of the victory was the Arkhids , who, with a hundred Spartans, attacked the enemy in the hottest spots of the city and ousted numerous Thebans from Sparta. A little later, at Mantinea, the Athenian cavalry encountered the Theban and Thessalian cavalry. The superiority in numbers was also on the side of Thebes, both sides suffered heavy losses, but the Athenians won the victory.

A series of setbacks did not give Epaminondos any choice but to win the new general battle. The Theban army , somewhat reinforced by detachments from the city-states of the Boeotian Union , was a third more Spartan. Arcadians loyal to the union also joined it, mainly from Megalopol (founded by the Thebans as the capital of Arcadia during their last stay in the Peloponnese ), and Tehei (traditionally the foremost policy of the Arcadians).

The competence and experience of both military leaders was great. Epaminondos used tactics that had already been successfully tested in the Battle of Levktra; he organized a Boeotian squad on the left flank of his army in the form of an unusually deep and dense hoplite column. This formation of troops, known as the "echelon", was aimed at gaining quantitative superiority in the desired area of ​​the battle (other sources call the tactical construction used by Epamindon "oblique wedge"). The tactical technique allowed a large and dense convoy of Boeotians to push through the shallow classic phalanx of the Spartans.

Epaminondas personally led the Boeotian column. The Thebans attacked with a sudden deceitful maneuver and pushed the right wing of the Spartans with a powerful onslaught, but the Lacedaemonians bravely held on, Epaminondas himself was mortally wounded by the Spartan Anticrates . Other Theban leaders, Iolaude and Daifant , were also killed , who were to become his successors instead of Pelopides , who had previously died in the battle against the Thessals. The course of the battle was reversed, and the Thebans retreated to their original positions, as the Spartans returned. The re-started battle could decide the fate of Hellas and transfer the hegemony to the winner, but the battle did not take place. On his deathbed, having heard of the death of his comrades-in-arms, Epaminondas instructed the Thebans to make peace, since they no longer had worthy leaders to continue the war, disastrous for all of Hellas.

Having lost their leader, Thebans lost hope of hegemony. But the Spartans, despite the recent military successes, were still weakened by the internal crisis, were not able to restore it. Weakening both Thebes and Sparta, the battle of Mantinea created the prerequisites not only for a temporary strengthening of Athens, but also for the subsequent conquest of Greece by Macedonia , since there was no city left in Greece that could achieve hegemony and unite Greek policies against a common threats.

All the military-political associations of the Hellenes collapsed (except for the Second Athenian Maritime Union , which actually broke up 6 years after the Allied War ). Chaos reigned in Balkan Greece, in which most policies were hostile to each other, military treaties were concluded and terminated, conflicts between policies broke out for any reason, mutually weakening them. In the policies themselves there was a continuous struggle between the rich and the poor.

The outstanding historian Xenophon , being a contemporary of the events described and seeing the consequences of the Battle of Mantineus, wrote that he was stopping his work on the history of Greece and was leaving it to someone else to continue.

• Xenophon " Greek History "
• Plutarch "Selected Biographies"
• Diodorus "Historical Library".
• Pausanias.
• Connolly P. Greece and Rome. Encyclopedia of military history. Eksmo-Press. M., 2000. Translation by S. Lopukhov, A. Khromov.

• Cornelius Nepot. About the famous foreign commanders. Epaminondus Biography
• The article "The decline of Sparta and the rise of Thebes" on the Russian-language Internet. Contains a description of the battle. Head from John Warry. Warfare in the classical world