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Updated: June 2, 2025
XXXVI. There were many Greeks, in his lifetime, who became great, and did great things, such as Timotheus, and Agesilaus, and Pelopidas, and Timoleon's great model, Epameinondas. But these men's actions produced a glory which was involved in much strain and toil, and some of their deeds have incurred censure, and even been repented of.
It is said, indeed, that the Spartans before this battle were so much ashamed of themselves, that they dared not even look their wives in the face. XXXIV. The independence of Messenia had been restored by Epameinondas, and its former citizens collected together from all quarters of Greece.
Epameinondas stayed at home disregarded, not being thought to be a man of action, because of his philosophical habits, nor a man of any power, because of his poverty.
Plato's expenses were borne by Dionysius of Syracuse, and those of Epameinondas by Pelopidas and his friends. Good men do not always refuse to receive presents from their friends, but, though they would scorn to make money by them, they willingly receive them to further an honourable ambition. These remarks of Panætius must, however, be received with caution.
He did not meet his death facing overwhelming odds, like Kleombrotus at Leuktra, nor yet in the act of rallying his broken forces, or of consummating his victory, as did Cyrus and Epameinondas.
Epameinondas was eager to assault the city itself, and to place a trophy of victory in its streets; but as he could not draw Agesilaus into a battle, he drew off his forces, and again laid waste the country. Meanwhile, in Lacedæmon itself, a body of two hundred men, of doubtful fidelity, seized the Issorium, where the temple of Artemis stands, which is a strong and easily defensible post.
He got Epameinondas turned out of his office of Bœotarch, and for a long time succeeded in lessening his influence in the state; but Pelopidas he could not misrepresent to the people, so he endeavoured to make a quarrel between him and Charon.
Another was directed against expenditure, and ordered that the roof of every house should consist of beams worked with the axe, and that the doors should be worked with the saw alone, and with no other tools. Lykurgus was the first to perceive the truth which Epameinondas is said in later times to have uttered about his own table, when he said that "such a dinner has no room for treachery."
However, Epameinondas, disregarding his own glory in comparison with the safety of Pelopidas, and fearing that if Alexander were driven to despair by seeing his kingdom falling to pieces, he might turn upon him like a wild beast, conducted the war remissly.
Epameinondas, whom all men know to have been born and to have passed his life in the greatest possible poverty, and Plato the philosopher, both exhibited excellent choruses, the former bearing the expense of a chorus of men playing on the flute, while the latter exhibited a cyclic chorus of boys.
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