Battle of Leuctra

Battle of Leuctra, battle fought on July 6, 371 bce, in Boeotia, Greece, that made Thebes the leading military power among the Greek city-states, ending the long dominance of Sparta. The battle also marked a revolutionary advance in battlefield tactics and demonstrated the effectiveness of homosexuality as a form of bonding for elite troops.

Thebes defied the Spartans by leading a league of Boeotian city-states that Sparta was determined to suppress. A force of some 12,000 Spartan and other Peloponnesian troops, led by King Cleombrotus, marched to attack Thebes, which hastily prepared to defend itself with its Boeotian League allies. Although the Thebans were outnumbered and their allies were unreliable, Theban general Epaminondas persuaded his colleagues that they should give battle on the plain at Leuctra (modern Lefktra).

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A History of War

Thebes was strong in cavalry, but its infantry phalanx looked certain to lose against the experienced Spartans. Epaminondas improvised a major departure from Greek military convention. Traditionally, the heavily armored hoplite phalanx fought in a block twelve deep, with the best troops in the place of honor on the right. But Epaminondas packed his hoplites on the left of his line in a column about fifty deep, fronted by the Theban Sacred Band, an elite body of 150 homosexual couples led by a commander named Pelopidas, renowned for his courage in combat. The center and right of his line, weak and depleted, he held back from contact with the Spartan phalanx, screened by skirmishers and horsemen. It was a risky maneuver, given the possibility that the Spartan left flank could break through and encircle the smaller Theban force. Yet, advancing obliquely to the attack, the Thebans delivered a crushing blow to the Spartan right, smashing it apart with heavy losses, including the death of Cleombrotus and most of his elite royal guard. The rest of the Peloponnesian forces, exposed to attack from the flank, put up little resistance, and the Spartan army fled. The few Spartan commanders who remained on the field asked for a truce to take away their dead and wounded, and rather than pursue the retreating enemy force, Epaminondas honored the request. Sparta suffered above all a blow to its prestige, which encouraged allies and subject states to drift away from its orbit.

One Theban ally who was present at the battle was the future king of Macedon, Philip, who used Epaminondas’s tactics in his own wars of conquest, as did his son, Alexander the Great, against his Persian enemies.

Losses: Theban, 300 of 8,500; Spartan,1,000 of 12,000.