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XLVI. For Neptune shall sooner bury Salamis itself with his waters than the memory of the trophies gained there; and the Boeotian Leuctra shall perish sooner than the glory of that great battle.
Thebes was the main power in Greece after the brilliant victory at Leuctra, and for a short time the city managed to maintain its supremacy. By virtue of its position, it decided the destiny of less powerful cities; and when Al-ex-an´der, tyrant of Thessaly, became very cruel, the Thebans sent Pelopidas to remonstrate with him.
Epaminondas is similarly said to have acknowledged his feeling, that it was the greatest felicity of his whole life that his father and mother survived to hear of his successful generalship and his victory at Leuctra. And he had the advantage, indeed, to have both his parents partake with him, and enjoy the pleasure of his good fortune.
As his friends wept, he said, “This day is not the end of my life, but the beginning of my happiness and completion of my glory;” and when they bewailed that he had no child, he said, “Leuctra and Mantinea are daughters enough to keep my name alive.” Then, as those who stood round faltered, unable to resolve to draw out the dart, he pulled it out himself with a firm hand, and the rush of blood that followed ended one of the most beautiful lives ever spent by one who was a law unto himself.
It may be also the result of an offensive combination; but then the crotchet is to the front, whilst in the case of defense it is to the rear. The battle of Prague is a very remarkable example of the danger to which such a crotchet is exposed if properly attacked. This order was used by the celebrated Epaminondas at the battles of Leuctra and Mantinea.
After that action, but not immediately after it, he invaded the Peloponnesus, and led his forces to the vicinity of Sparta, and then effected a revolution that bridled that power perpetually. Nine years after Leuctra he won the Battle of Mantinea, dying on the field.
The iniquitous attack on Thebes, a state thought incapable of effectual resentment, was avenged by the defeat of Leuctra, which announced the end of the political supremacy and the military predominance of Sparta.
After the battle of Leuctra, in which the Spartans were defeated by the Thebans, the mothers of those who were slain congratulated one another, and went to the temples to thank the Gods, that their children had done their duty; while the relations of those who survived the defeat were inconsolable. The Romans were not less distinguished by their self-denying patriotism.
He then left a garrison to occupy the post, and proceeded over a mountainous road in the territory of Thespiæ, on the eastern declivity of Helicon, to Leuctra, where he encamped. He was now near Thebes, having a communication with Sparta through the port of Creusis. The Thebans were dismayed, and it required all the tact and eloquence of Epaminondas and Pelopidas to rally them.
Such a politic piece of sophistry as was devised by Agesilaus, in that great perplexity of the people as to the treatment to be given to those who had played the coward at the battle of Leuctra, when after that unhappy defeat, he decreed, that the laws should sleep for that day, it would be hard to find any parallel to; neither indeed have we the fellow of it in all Pompey's story.
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