Masters of the Battlefield

by Davis, Paul K.

  The two armies faced each other for a time. The initial action was on the part of the cavalry. Before the infantry had fully deployed, the Spartan cavalry (after harassing Theban camp followers) rode toward the strong Theban left flank. It was met and soon routed by the Theban cavalry, superior in both numbers and quality. Xenophon writes, “Now when Cleombrotus began to lead his army against the enemy, in the first place, before the troops under him so much as perceived that he was advancing, the horsemen had already joined battle and those of the Lacedaemonians had speedily been worsted; then in their flight they had fallen foul of their own hoplites, and, besides, the companies of the Thebans were now charging upon them.”17 This is where Epaminondas demonstrated his originality. He was gambling the entire battle on one throw. His most motivated men went into battle first; if they failed, the demoralized right flank would break at the first sign of wavering. He was throwing his best troops at the more numerous Spartans, the best troops in the known world. As soon as Pelopidas and Epaminondas saw the confusion in the Spartan ranks, they began their advance.

  As with the debate over the use of the “mass shove,” there is also some argument over just how Epaminondas formed what has come to be called the “Theban wedge.” One scholar has suggested that the Theban left was actually deployed into a point, an inverted V, with the Sacred Band at the apex. The fact that the V was hollow would not be obvious to the enemy, thus giving the impression of greater than actual numbers. All of this depends on the translation of the Greek word embolon, or wedge, and its use by a variety of ancient writers.18 This theory has been answered by a different study of the word that indicates a comparison to a ram on a Greek trireme, hence the strong point of contact to break an enemy, not necessarily a literal wedge.19 Thus, if there was a “point” to the wedge it would be at the spot at which the right wing began its refusal.

  As the cavalry began to clear away and Cleombrotus saw the unbalanced formation advancing toward him, he ordered troops to shift to his right to attempt a flanking movement. Seeing this, Pelopidas ordered his Sacred Band into a run and struck the Spartans as they began their redeployment. The rest of the Theban left wing, under Epaminondas, was soon engaged and the battle was on. Harking back to the earlier discussion on othismos and the nature of a massed charge, here is my proposal as to how the initial stage of the battle was conducted. Goldsworthy argues that the narrower the formation, the easier it was to maintain cohesion. Add to that the fact that the massive Theban left flank was led by the Sacred Band. These soldiers were the nearest Theban equivalent of Spartiates, a force of men who did not farm like the normal militia, but spent their time in military training. Their defeat of a much larger Spartan force at Tegyra a few years earlier had to have built up a strong measure of confidence within their ranks. While there is no reference to their marching in step like the Spartans, these professionals must have been able to keep a tighter formation than could a standard phalanx. In Goldsworthy’s opinion, “A deeper, and therefore narrower, phalanx encountered fewer obstacles and could as a result move faster and further, whilst retaining its order.”20 Add to that the timing of the charge, just as the Spartans were reorganizing from the disrupting cavalry retreat and trying to redeploy to take advantage of the narrower front approaching them. All of these factors should equate into a powerful initial contact that could easily have gained at least temporary momentum for the attackers. Then, the rest of the phalanx arrived for support, whether moral or physical or both. The Spartans must have been at a disadvantage from the outset.

  In spite of all those advantages, it was not enough to immediately sweep the field. The hand-to-hand front-rank fighting was intense. Whether Cleombrotus stood in the front rank or not, he was mortally wounded in combat. Xenophon reports that the Spartans were doing well, or “they would not have been able to take him up and carry him off still living had not those who were fighting in the front of him been holding the advantage at the time. But when Deinon, the polemarch, Sphodrias, one of the king’s tent-companions, and Cleonymus, the son of Sphodiras, had been killed, then the royal bodyguard … [and] the others fell back before the Theban mass, while those who were on the left wing … gave way.”21

  The massive “ram” of the Theban left flank coupled with the speed of the attack caught the Spartans unprepared. Once their king and a number of his top men began to fall, the Spartan contingent of the battle line retreated to their camp. The mercenary and allied forces saw little or no combat because of the refused Theban flank angled backward from the front line, so they retreated just as quickly when they saw the Spartans withdraw, both from shock at the sight of such an event and fear of that “ram” striking their flank. Once in camp, established behind a ditch, the Spartans reassembled for a stand.

  Epaminondas did not push his luck, for he knew he had no need to do so. Piled on the field of battle were 400 dead Spartiates out of a total of 1,000 casualties, the worst loss of Spartan life in their history, far greater than their losses at the stand against the Persians at Thermopylae in 480. Sparta also had not lost a king since that battle. Such a historic defeat was not unappreciated by Sparta’s allies in the ranks. Xenophon writes that the Spartans perceived “that the allies were one and all without heart for fighting, while some of them were not even displeased at what had taken place.”22

  Epaminondas’s movement to contact was an approach march, since he had a fair idea where the Spartans would be. He lost any element of strategic surprise when Cleombrotus took the long way around to approach Thebes from the west. This also cost Epaminondas the opportunity to choose the battleground. Initially, therefore, he was at a disadvantage both as to his position and his numbers. Certainly the battle itself was no surprise, since the two armies had been facing each other for a time. Epaminondas did achieve tactical surprise, however. He may or may not have known of dissension in the Spartan camp and the pressure being placed on Cleombrotus. Even if he did, he was smart enough not to underestimate his opposition.

  Although facing the prime units opposite each other on the field had been done before, Cleombrotus was not ready for it. Epaminondas’s deliberate attack led to a battle that he controlled as much as any commander could in a phalanx battle. The massed Theban left wing was a surprise, but Cleombrotus tried to adapt to it by shifting men to his right flank. It is possible that the Spartan cavalry was deployed as a screen once Cleombrotus saw the Theban formation and was beginning the redeployment of his own phalanx to be in an outflanking position. So the nature of the Theban deployment was unexpected and the assault began, in Xenophon’s words, “before the troops under [Cleombrotus] so much as perceived that he was advancing.” Although the Spartans really could not have expected their cavalry to prevail, they certainly did not expect to see it retreating into their main force. That is where the Theban control of the tempo of the battle became all important. In the midst of the turmoil and troop movement, the Sacred Band’s assault came well before the Spartans were prepared. Epaminondas’s concentration of not just manpower but high-quality troops was key to his plan succeeding. The most audacious part of the plan was the refused flank, for he was chancing everything on one throw of the dice. Even though the echeloned units were the least dependable of his army, their mere presence was enough to freeze the Spartan allies.

  Epaminondas neither tactically exploited his victory nor pursued his enemy; there was no need. He had inflicted sufficient casualties to not only damage the numbers of the Spartiates but more importantly to damage their reputation and morale.

  Epaminondas followed up the Battle of Leuctra with an invasion of the Peloponnese, where he ran rampant over Spartan-controlled territory and liberated the helots who provided the Spartiates with their agricultural sustenance. Sparta’s slow decline now became precipitate. Not only beaten on the field but also humiliated before the rest of Greece, Sparta tried one last time to save its reputation and lands. The Spartans gathered one last force at Mantinea in 362, and this time it was Thebes that had the large
r force. Epaminondas repeated his Leuctra maneuver at the battle with the same results. Unfortunately, he was killed in that battle. He was wounded by a spear; he asked about the progress of the battle as he was dying and learned the enemy was withdrawing. The battle was a tactical draw but a strategic victory for Thebes, since it reinforced the newly liberated peoples of Lacedaemonia and ended Spartan power once and for all.

  The battle was a draw mainly because Epaminondas was killed. Until that point the Thebans were sweeping the field, according to Xenophon: “Thus, then, he made his attack, and he was not disappointed of his hope; for by gaining the mastery at the point where he struck, he caused the entire army of his adversaries to flee.”23 Victor Davis Hanson argues that had the Leuctra tactics been new and able to stand on their own, then Epaminondas’s death would not have mattered. Yet ancient history is full of instances where one side gave up the fight when their leader was killed; would Leuctra have turned out differently if Cleombrotus had not died? It’s impossible to say, but it is a tribute to any leader’s standing that his men lose heart upon hearing of his death. The fact that the Theban wedge “caused the entire army of his adversaries to flee” sounds like a successful tactic. The Thebans around the dying general did declare victory, and that was the news that released a mortally wounded Epaminondas from this life. “I have lived long enough, for I die unconquered,” he is supposed to have said.24 Other accounts say that before the spear (or javelin) was withdrawn, Epaminondas asked after two of his chief subordinates. When informed that they had been killed, his last command was to make peace. Perhaps had he said “keep fighting” the victory would have been complete.

  Epaminondas’s Generalship

  THE TWO MAIN PRINCIPLES OF WAR EPAMINONDAS mastered were the twin concepts of mass and economy of force. Epaminondas chose the correct center of gravity for his objective: the Spartan contingent and King Cleombrotus. Although a deeper-than-usual phalanx had been seen in other battles, what made its deployment at Leuctra significant is that it was on the Theban left, directly facing the strength of the Spartan army. Traditionally, the place of honor in the line of battle was the far right, which meant that the best troops of opposing armies did not face each other. Historian of ancient Greece George Cawkwell writes, “Epaminondas’ reversal [of tradition] at Leuctra is the mark of a revolutionary change in the conception of warfare.… [I]n 371 the conflict was centred on, and indeed confined to, the main antagonists.”25 As Hans Delbrück comments, “All of this is valuable only because it guarantees one’s own left wing the victory over the enemy right.”26 Taking out the enemy leader as well as the strongest force on the battlefield necessarily demoralized Sparta’s allied units.

  Hanson in a 1998 article disputes the revolutionary nature of Epaminondas’s action, primarily by taking most of the accounts by ancient historians to task.27 While it is certainly true that every tactic Epaminondas employed at Leuctra had been used some time earlier, the question remains: how many other generals had learned any lessons from previous uses, and how many had welded them into a coherent whole? The combination of massed phalanx, strength versus opponent’s strength, and the refused flank together took down the king and caused the vast number of Spartiate casualties.28 It was the concentration of force at the center of gravity that is key. In his 1999 book The Soul of Battle, Hanson admits that the heavier left wing was “a novel tactical innovation” that “gained enormous penetrating power, as accumulated shields created greater thrust.”29

  The Theban wedge showed its other advantage in the realm of economy of force. In normal hoplite warfare the entire lines attacked as one, but Epaminondas attacked only with his left flank. There is some debate over whether the refusing of his right flank was intentional. Goldsworthy asserts, “It may be that later accounts of Epaminondas’ echeloned advance at Leuctra described not a deliberate ploy, but the inevitably faster advance of the deep Theban phalanx compared to the rest of the army.”30

  Hanson also argues against the presence of a deliberately refused flank, taking Xenophon as the only reliable source. Not trusting Diodorus, the only ancient historian to describe the Theban formation so, he argues that if Plutarch and Diodorus mention an oblique attack by the left wing, then the right wing would trail behind, not being an intentional refusal of the flank. He asserts that “there was little tactical reason for these generally inferior troops to attempt such a complicated maneuver,” what he calls “a deliberate withdrawal.”31 Refusing a flank, however, does not necessitate a withdrawal, especially on offense. While the most famous flank refusal of modern times, Joshua Chamberlain at Little Round Top at the Battle of Gettysburg, did indeed involve a deliberate withdrawal, that was the nature of being on the defense and in immediate danger of being outflanked. All Epaminondas had to do was stagger his less dependable allied forces in echelon (see map on page 15). Thus, such a move would answer Hanson’s citation of Pausanias that the Spartan allies did have the opportunity to fight but would not stand their ground. The first phalanx of the echelon could, indeed, have had contact with the enemy.

  Some sources refer to these forces not in the main assault as reserves, but I agree with Hanson that they were not deliberately held back for commitment at an important moment, as is the role of reserves. Held back in echelon, yes, but not as a traditional reserve to be committed as circumstances dictate.

  The echelon attack and the weighted wing were introduced by Epaminondas but copied by many. The almost immediate impact came with the rise of Macedon. In his work on ancient warfare, J. E. Lendon observes that “[Philip II] lived in the house of the Theban general Pammenes, who had a formidable reputation for military cunning. In Thebes, it was said, Philip learned many lessons.”32 Philip’s primary accomplishment as king of Macedon was to create a professional standing army that used the latest equipment and tactics, depending heavily on cavalry. Alexander would almost certainly not have accomplished his great deeds without the army he inherited from his father, Philip.

  Epaminondas’s influence was not only beneficial to Macedon in the immediate future, but was reincarnated two millennia later, as noted by Basil Liddell Hart: “He not only broke away from tactical methods established by the experience of centuries, but in tactics, strategy, and grand strategy alike laid the foundations on which subsequent masters built. Even his structural designs have survived or been revived. For in tactics the ‘oblique order’ which Frederick [the Great] made famous was only a slight elaboration of the method of Epaminondas.”33

  2

  Alexander (356–323 BC)

  King of Macedon, Leader of a Macedonian-Greek Coalition

  Alexander accomplished great things in a short space of time, and by his acumen and courage surpassed in the magnitude of his achievements all kings whose memory is recorded from the beginning of time.

  —Diodorus Siculus, Library, first century BC

  UNLIKE EPAMINONDAS, the great fourth-century BC Theban general and statesman, Alexander of Macedon was born to wealth and power. He was the first and probably only child of Philip II of Macedon and his fourth wife, Olympias of Epirus. His parents were two of a kind, both intensely passionate, physically and emotionally. That mutual passion led to their marriage—and ultimately to their separation. Alexander was thus raised in a turbulent household in a turbulent time. Philip II was in the process of making Macedon the major power of southeastern Europe, and therefore spent much of his time away from his capital, home, and family in Pella. His father’s absence naturally meant that Alexander became emotionally closer to his mother, but accounts of his early life, primarily from Plutarch, imply that there was no hostility between father and son in his early years.

  Throughout his life, Alexander exhibited strong religious feelings, sacrificing to the gods daily and often praying for their guidance and blessing. Such practices were normal in Macedon, but certainly Alexander’s beliefs were intensified by his mother. Plutarch’s biography tells this story:

  Well, then, the night before that on
which the marriage was consummated, the bride dreamed that there was a peal of thunder and that a thunder-bolt fell upon her womb, and that thereby much fire was kindled, which broke into flames that travelled all about, and then was extinguished.… After the marriage, Philip dreamed that he was putting a seal upon his wife’s womb; and the device of the seal, as he thought, was the figure of a lion.… Aristander of Telmessus said that the woman was pregnant, since no seal was put upon what was empty, and pregnant of a son whose nature would be bold and lion-like.1

  Olympias claimed that this dream meant she was impregnated by Zeus, a story Alexander learned when he was in his mid-teens. He also was supposed to be descended from Herakles and Achilles. With the genealogical assertion of gods in the family line, it is no surprise Alexander took his religion and himself seriously.

  In the Pellaean palace Alexander was given an education fit for a royal heir, but when he was twelve or thirteen Philip imported a special tutor, the philosopher Aristotle. Possibly thinking that Olympias was having too much influence on the boy, Philip sent Alexander and a number of other students to study at Mieza, outside the capital city. Here the teaching was much more rational than that which he had received from his mother, who was a loyal devotee of the cult of Dionysus. Historians have long debated the sway Aristotle may have had over the young Alexander. The scientific aspects of Alexander’s invasion of the Persian Empire, for example, certainly demonstrate much of it. “On the other hand there is no sign that he was in the least influenced by his teacher’s views on politics, limited as they were to the city-state,” writes J. R. Hamilton. “Convinced of the natural inferiority of ‘barbarians,’ Aristotle taught Alexander that they needed a master.”2 As for his military personality, however, Aristotle had little if any influence.