Epaminondas

Epaminondas was a Greek general of Thebes and statesman of the 4th century BC. He led the city-state out of Spartan subjugation into a pre-eminent position in Greek politics. He reshaped the political map of Greece, fragmented old alliances, created new ones, and supervised the construction of entire cities. He was also militarily influential and invented and implemented several major battlefield tactics.

About Epaminondas in brief

Epaminondas was a Greek general of Thebes and statesman of the 4th century BC. He led the city-state out of Spartan subjugation into a pre-eminent position in Greek politics. He reshaped the political map of Greece, fragmented old alliances, created new ones, and supervised the construction of entire cities. He was also militarily influential and invented and implemented several major battlefield tactics. His life is very poorly attested in the ancient sources, especially compared to some of his near contemporaries. He is largely remembered for a decade of campaigning that sapped the strength of the great city-states and paved the way for the Macedonian conquest. A mere twenty-seven years after his death, a recalcitrant Thebes was obliterated by Alexander the Great. He preferred the society of a grave and austere old man before that of all those of his own age; nor did he part with him until he so far excelled his fellow students in learning, that it might easily be perceived he would in like manner excel them all in other pursuits. He was born into the Thebes aristocracy in the late 5th centuryBC; estimates for the year of his birth vary widely. In later centuries the Roman orator, Cicero called him \”the first man of Greece\”, and even in modern times Montaigne judged him one of the three \”worthiest and most excellent men\” that had ever lived. He had been educated in childhood by Lysis of Tarentum, the last major philosopher of the Pythagorean philosophers.

He claims that his father, Polymnis, was a descendant of the Phoenician conquerors of Phoenicians. He also claims that he had been left by his ancestors in his childhood by one of his ancestors, Tarentus, one of them the last Pythagoreans. He died at the Battle of Leuctra in 4th century BC, but his death is not mentioned in Xenophon’s Hellenica. He was one of approximately 50 ancient figures given an extensive biography by Plutarch in his Parallel Lives, in which he is paired with the Roman statesman Scipio Africanus; however, both these \”Lives\” are now lost. There is also a surviving biography of Epaminonda by the Roman author Cornelius Nepos from the first century BC which, in the absence of Plutarch’s, becomes a major source for Epaminonas’s life. The period of Greek history from 411–362 BC is primarily attested by the historian, contemporary and direct witness Xenophon, his work being a continuation of Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War. Xenophon does not always mention EpaminONDas himself and does not note his presence at thebattle of LeUCTra. However Xenophon tells us of Epaminsondas’s last battle and death, which is told in the last and seventh book of the Hellensica. Epaminontas’s role in the conflicts of the4th century is described, much later, by Diodorus Siculus, in his Bibliotheca historica.

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