Ancient Thebes: Spartan Wars, Sacred Band, and Macedonian Fall

The city of Thebes had a rich history, as related in mythology. According to legend, the town was established either by Cadmus from Tyre or Zeus’s son, Amphion. In addition, Heracles was also credited with helping the city in battles against other Greek cities. Perhaps the most famous resident was Oedipus, he of the infamous family tragedy.

Thebes controlled a rich plain, with its capital on the southern edge of the plain. The acropolis, called the Cadmeia, was located on a peninsula half a mile by a quarter mile wide. The Cadmeia overlooked the town and the gorges of the rivers Dirce and Ismenus. During the Minoan and Mycenaean periods, the palace was a large and important royal structure, probably with the same magnitude as the one at Mycenae. It sat on the important trade route from the north, at Thessaly, to the south, at the Isthmus of Corinth. In addition, the palace received extensive revenue from its control over the rich plain and its agriculture.

Before the Trojan War, the palace was destroyed, and Homer does not mention Thebes in his catalog of ships from Boeotia. After the Trojan War, the Boeotians arrived from Thessaly and settled Thebes. The region became a mixture of Greek dialects, including pre-Dorian Arcadian, Thessalian, and Aeolic, as well as Dorian. This would all make sense since Boeotia was at the crossroads of Greece. The city of Thebes began to recover after the Boeotian immigration. It did not have the ability to control the entire region as Athens did in Attica, and by the eighth century, there were at least twelve independent city-states. Thebes took leadership of a federal league the Boeotian League encompassing many of the cities of Boeotia. This league minted a type of federal coinage and banded together for protection against Thessaly in the north and Athens in the south.

The city of Thebes was ruled by a small aristocracy originally based on birth, which later gave way to wealth, primarily due to the raising of pigs. This oligarchy controlled the city and was initially on favorable terms with the tyrants of Athens until the two cities went to war over Plataea. During the war, Plataea asked Sparta for help, and it suggested that Plataea ask Athens instead. Athens and Plataea defeated the Thebans, and the Plataeans received land from Thebes.

Thebes and Athens were now enemies, and Thebes joined an alliance with Sparta. Thebes would submit to Persia during the Persian Wars, and after their victory in the Battle of Plataea in 479, the Athenians advocated that Thebes should be destroyed. Sparta rejected this claim since it would create a power vacuum, and Sparta feared Athens would take advantage. During the rise of the Athenian Empire, the Thebans provided a counterweight on land in central Greece against the Athenians. In 431, the Athenians attacked the city of Plataea, which Thebes now controlled and was the gateway to Boeotia, which began the Peloponnesian War. During that war, Thebes sided with Sparta, although there was tension between them since Sparta wanted to ensure that Thebes remain a second-class power. After Athens was defeated, the Thebans wanted to destroy it, but again Sparta refused.

During the next thirty years, Sparta attempted to control the Greek world. The growing resentment of Thebes against Sparta led to the Battle of Leuctra, in which Thebes defeated the Spartan army in 371. The Theban army developed a new series of tactics incorporating the use of cavalry in conjunction with a strong concentrated Theban infantry force, the Sacred Band, which massed the infantry into a strong wedge of 300 hoplites. The Sacred Band spearheaded an attack that gave them more firepower and strength when fighting in a small area.

The Theban victory was not universally celebrated, as Athens now realized that its traditional enemy had now become supreme. The Theban victory caused the Spartan league to fragment. Many of the states under Spartan control now expelled the oligarchs who had supported Sparta in favor of democratic forces. The Thebans supported the idea of a Pan-Arcadian league, with Mantinea as the major city. The Theban army under its leader Epaminondas arrived in Arcadia and helped the league. Thebes were then persuaded by the Mantineans not to leave but to march on Sparta instead.

With four divisions taking four different roads, the allies advanced to Sellasia, a town to the north of Sparta that had been burned. The army advanced toward Sparta on the bank of the Eurotas River. The river was swollen, and the allied army could not cross the river into Sparta; with the only bridge heavily guarded, the city was saved. The Spartans now received reinforcements from Corinth and a few other cities, forcing Epaminondas to abandon his attack.

Instead of returning to Thebes, he led the army west to Messenia, where he ended Spartan control and established an independent Messenia hostile to Sparta. In 369, Epaminondas returned to Thebes, having humiliated Sparta. A few months after his first invasion of the Peloponnese, Epaminondas returned again as the head of another Theban army. The Thebans were successful at breaking through the lines, but Sparta now received support from its old ally, Syracuse, in Sicily, which sent Celtic and Iberian mercenaries. Epaminondas retreated without achieving much. Thebes put garrisons into the Peloponnesian cities as they retreated to make sure that they would remain loyal to it.

During the same time, the other great Theban leader, Pelopidas, acted in the north. The major theater of war here was Thessaly. Thebes did not want Thessaly to be under a single ruler, as Thessaly had recently been under Jason of Pherae. Pelopidas brought a few cities in the north under Theban protection in 369 to prevent a union. He was also asked to help decide on who should be the ruler of Macedon between two claimants. He forced King Alexander II to abandon his alliance with Athens and turn to Thebes. Pelopidas’s main task was to disrupt Athenian influence and power in the Chalcidian region. He returned the next year and again created an alliance with Macedon and the new regent.

The Macedonians cemented this alliance by giving Thebes a number of hostages, one of whom was a young boy named Philip, brother of King Alexander II, who was now able to see firsthand the new strategies of Thebes under Epaminondas and Pelopidas. On his return home, Philip stopped at the court of Alexander of Thessaly, not knowing he had become an ally of Athens—and he was promptly taken prisoner. A Boeotian army marched north to rescue him but was outmaneuvered and had to retreat. Epaminondas, who was only a common hoplite then, rallied the troops; he was elected general and marched again into Thessaly and frightened Alexander into releasing his friend Philip.

During this time, many of the Greek states attempted to obtain help from Persia and began to sue for peace with Persia. As the Theban envoy, Pelopidas was able to get favorable terms for Thebes. When he returned to Greece with the Persian king’s letter, all were opposed to the settlement, and Thebes was beset with a series of issues. In 364, Pelopidas moved north to Thessaly for the third time. Here, at the Battle of Cynoscephalae, after an eclipse of the Sun on July 13, 364, that was interpreted as a bad omen for Thebes, Alexander of Thessaly led his army against Pelopidas. As Pelopidas after a hard-fought battle had seized the high ground, he saw his personal enemy, Alexander, fleeing. Pelopidas, ignoring the rule that a general should stay where he is, charged after him into the Thessalian lines and was cut down.

Although the Thebans had won the battle, the death of Pelopidas was a hard blow. The next year, the Thebans sent another army to avenge his death and forced Thessaly unlder their control. The Thebans then took their revenge against their old enemy, the city of Orchomenus. After a failed attempt by Orchomenus to attack Thebes, the Thebans passed a resolution to destroy the city and enslave its population. The city was destroyed, the male residents were killed, and the rest were enslaved.

The Persian letter giving Thebes control of the Greek world was not accepted by the other Greek cities, and soon resentment of Thebes came to a head in the Peloponnese. The Arcadians, who owed their power and existence to Thebes, now moved against it by joining with Sparta, their old enemy into a new alliance. In 362, the Boeotians moved south against their enemies at Mantinea. Epaminondas attempted to seize Sparta in a surprise attack but found the city well protected. He marched back to Mantinea, where he faced the Spartans, Athenians, and Mantineans. The Thebans attacked as they had done at Leuctra and again were victorious.

As Epaminondas followed up his victory, he was cut down and mortally wounded. His death showed the fortitude of war and chance. His strategies and tactics revolutionized the way the Greeks had fought, showing that changes in the hoplite system were possible. The Theban system of war allowed the city to create a strong confederation from Thessaly to the Peloponnese. With the death of Epaminondas and Pelopidas, the city now atrophied, and Greece was in constant state of flux.

During the next twenty years, the Greek cities continually fought among themselves, ignoring the growing power of Macedon. The new leader of the northern kingdom, Philip II, had received an excellent military education in Thebes. The lessons he learned and his continual adaptations allowed Macedon to move against the northern cities. Ultimately, Thebes realized the danger, but too late. In 338, at Chaeronea, Philip and his Macedonian army defeated the Sacred Band and destroyed Theban power.

After Philip’s death in 336, Thebes rose in rebellion against Macedon but was defeated by Philip’s son and successor, Alexander the Great. At the second Battle of Chaeronea, Thebes was defeated, and Alexander ordered the city razed. The city ceased to exist from then on.