História da Grécia Antiga #23 com Donald Kagan, de Yale

Let me remind you that the Spartans ever since their victory in the Peloponnesian War had been attempting to extend their hegemony at first all the way over into Asia and then when that was thwarted they tried to do so on the mainland of Greece and one consequence of their effort and the failure to achieve it in an easy way was the restoration of Athens to a primary position in the Greek world again not as powerful as Sparta but once again an independent state that was the capable of being a serious opponent of the Spartans and

today I want to talk about the emergence of a third great power in this period which had never had a position I think of something resembling equality with the leading powers in the Greek world although it had had periods when it was very strong anyway Thebes is what I'm talking about now you start if you look at the situation in 379 when the Spartans were in control of Thebes as a consequence of the actions of FIBA desk there was a spartan garrison there in the city on its acropolis there were Spartan Garrison's in other towns

in by OSHA and it was probably as low a point for the Thebans as they had experienced since the 450s when the Athenians gained control of the OSHA but starting with the successful Theban rebellion which overthrew the Spartan command of the city the Thebans launched a period of Growth in power influence wealth and even to some degree extent which justifies modern historians in speaking about a period perhaps beginning in 371 and running at least a decade to which they give the name the sieben hegemony and today I want to talk about how that happened and

how it sort of developed and ended well not not ended not today yeah i guess i will be talking about how in a day right the Spartans invaded after the Theban Overthrow of Spartan rule and in the first year the lead in that invasion was given to the young king Cleon Brutus not to adjust elaeis and his failure to undertake that command exercised the minds of ancient writers as well as modern ones one answer whenever adjust the layest doesn't take command of an army which is following a policy that he likes people suggest that he

might have been physically incapable of doing it he was an old man and he was he had been Injured and so there's a that's a plausible reason at any time and yet the ancient writers were persuaded that there were times when he was simply playing politics in some complicated way and choosing not to take the command this is one of those occasions when they speculate that he was trying to get clay on Brutus engaged in this anti Theban policy which would provide for greater support for that general adesso layin policy and that that's why he

had worked It so that clay operatives got the command we simply can't be sure about what the truth of that is clay on Brutus however did not wage a very aggressive campaign and that first invasion of for 378 produced very very little however subsequent Spartan invasions also even those led by just lays were not successful the ibanez were able gradually to gather their strength to recover parts of B OSHA and bring them under their power And to drive the Spartans away without yielding anything of importance one of the consequences I'm talking really about the years

388 370 a 377 376 and into 375 one of the things that the Thebans engaged in in this period and it's extremely important because it provides the basis for the power that they will develop was a reconstruction of the B ocean league the Thebans had commanded or LED or dominated the B ocean league before they changed its Constitution however in these years in a way that was rather important it what the inward to simplify the matter the entire operation of the league became more democratic they used to have the decisive bodies that determine the Theban

policy in the form of four separate councils which were sort of indirect regimes that really made the policy the new constitution made the decisive place really an assembly in which all the representatives of the Theban cities came and made policy in an assembly not in separate councils all of which could be more readily controlled by collig archaic figures and the only thing is that the meetings of the B ocean league took place in Thebes now not only the Thebes have a majority of representatives in that league by or at least the largest number by virtue

of its size and its leading role but the fact that it all took place in Thebes meant that there would be more thebans There and more Thebans playing an influential role in what was going on nonetheless we shouldn't discount the truly democratic nature of this regime it's a new thing by OSHA and Thebes used to be bulwark of air of Halla garki and it became a remarkably Democratic City and I think there's reason to take note of the fact that this seemed to have had an impact on Thebes and by OSHA much like the one

that Herodotus praises so highly back when Athens became Democratic when they threw out their tyrants and established a Kleist enik regime Herodotus says that they became better warriors they produced a better army they began defeating their enemies as they had not done before I think that is very clearly also what happens in Thebes that we can't get away from the fact that thieves became a more formidable military power thereafter whether or not it's linked to democracy is open to argument but I think there is A real argument that would say it worked that way at

least we don't know the details of this very well but a very unusual thing seems to have happened the Thebans ultimately were able to increase the size of their army by using farmers who were not ordinarily have been able to afford hoplite equipment but somehow the state managed to equip poorer farmers and to turn them into hoplites so that ultimately the army that Pheebs commanded when you get down to the years After the battle of leuctra in which the Thebans and their friends defeated the Spartans you will see that a really a huge army by

Greek standards goes marching into the Peloponnesus of which a large portion was this Theban hoplite group that was a much more potent because of its size and it could be argued because of the spirit of his new newly hop lighted the Democrats you might say well as the thebans were developing this league they were also Fighting the Spartans and gradually driving the Spartans back for instance the they destroyed the city of platia which was always on the side of the enemies of Thebes in this case they run the side of the Spartans and it would

take a while before that was undone they also placed a number of cities under Theban command they didn't need to do that for most of the cities in bioship because mostly they were they seemed to be satisfied and pleased to cooperate With the sea and why not I mean I should make the point clear as to why they would be happy to do that when the Spartans invaded by OSHA they didn't only beat up Thebes in fact Thebes was less hurt than were the other towns because thieves was further away and better equipped to defend

itself every time the Spartans came in they ravage to be ocean countryside and did harm to these be ocean town so it was Thebes that was the defender the protector of The oceans against the Spartans and this certainly gave them popularity it helps explain why this newbie Ocean Confederation was so effective and so loyal the Thebans were doing a key job for be OSHA and the oceans and this meanwhile this new army that was being put together I wasn't of course entirely new its heart would have been the old be ocean hoplite farmer group but

it was added to and it was given this new twist I think really a combination twist of Two kinds of elements that explain a kind of enthusiasm a kind of morale boost that they had one was a greater sense of what we would call nationalism it's obviously anachronistic for the city-state's but we don't have a better word for it me that is to say this constant warfare these constant attacks by the Spartans culminating in this seizure of their city against all custom against all law in a very unpleasant way and the support Of these oligarchs

as against the common people in the ordinary folks so that when the this new regime led I should point out by these two extraordinary military leaders palapa des and epaminondas when these fellows also were responsible for the liberation of Thebes especially palapa des and when they were leading the fight for the defense of bo show all of that meant that there was a growing feeling of we are be oceans we are together and the enemy is the Spartans and we need to fight them to that if you throw in the feeling that democracy appears to

have in its first burst especially I should point out that the Athenian extraordinary success on land occurs right after the democratic revolution of cleisthenes I don't say they become bad thereafter but they're never again quite as extraordinary as a land force as they are then an analogy that's often drawn is with the armies of the French Revolution in the 18th Century which really were fantastically successful right after the Revolution began and they began enrolling indeed conscripting great numbers of people who would never have been in the Army before on in the name of the nation

in the name of freedom in the name of all kinds of lovely things again that's it's often neglected that the French already had a terrific army before that happened and they had wonderful offices in generals and was skilled in the art of war so is Kind of a best of all worlds where they had a solid base for military superiority to which was added this great group there's great business of numbers and the zeal that went with it something like that I believe is going on here in the three 70s to help explain what's happening

to the what becomes is enormously powerful and successful Theban army the fighting goes on of the Siemens you remember joined with the Athenians against the Spartans back at The time of the foundation of the second Athenian Confederacy in 377 and they do work together for a time but it doesn't take very long for their to grow up differences between the Athenians and the B oceans they are if you look back at the whole history more frequently enemies than they are friends they are long-standing differences suspicions attitudes that are not entirely friendly and so on and

as Steven power grows and as the threat from Sparta diminishes the Athenians become less enthusiastic about their alliance with Thebes because the Thebans are now emerging as a contender for the leading position for a hegemony opposition in Greece so we will see the Athenians and the Thebans gradually moving apart in the decade of the three 70s there was in 375 a proposal for peace to be established in the warring Greek world it was apparently there's some difference of opinion among our sources but one thing it seems clear the King of Persia was in favor of

it the ancient writers explained his reason for doing that for being interested in having that happen because he had other Wars to fight as so often was the case there was a rebellion in Egypt which was always a serious menace so he wanted peace so that he could hire Greek mercenaries to fight in his army perhaps that wasn't the only reason that the Great King had he must have been worried at the growth Of Athenian power and influence at sea which was continuing throughout this period the second Athena Confederacy never had the power and extent

that the great Empire had had in the 5th century but it it was scary from the standpoint of the Great King and so he might very well have wanted to restore peace to Greece as a way of stopping excuses for a further expansion on the part of the Athenians on the other hand the Athenians were not unhappy to make peace As an opportunity to consolidate the gains that they had had and because that would put a stop to what I think was beginning to worry them the expansion of Thebes am i doing they're still worried

number one about Sparta and 375 Spartans haven't been defeated by anybody there's still the most serious power there's still the power that stands for persian power in the Greek world but things have become more complicated as thieves has emerged on the scene well the ancient Rite aid I adore is especially speaks of an event well let me describe the event he says that when it was time to sign this common piece maybe I just want to say a word about that to the greek words for common piece our coin a a van a it is

a term that comes up again and again in the 4th century in attempting to bring peace agreements among the Greek States it's a new thing as you know peace in the past usually took the form of the swearing of ODEs to accept a Peace treaty on very specific terms between combatants in that war the coin a a rainy concept has a more modern ring to it and it's it seems to have the idea that there should be a common peace among all the Greeks and that the signatories should be responsible for upholding that common piece

it's a very interesting idea it sparked enormous interest in scholars I think especially after the First World War when all of the hopeful talk about The League of Nations and cons picture of Perpetual peace and all of that stuff was flying around in certain circles so people hope to see in the Koine a rainy this might have been a preliminary sign of that same kind of idea but it didn't work any better in the ancient world than it has worked in the in the modern world to get back to the first suggestion in 375 about

having such a thing these states were agreed to do it and then in trouble came when thieves Insisted that just as the Spartans could sign on behalf of all of their allies for the Peloponnesian League the Thebans wanted the right to sign for all of their be ocean allies on behalf of the ocean league it would have been the de facto recognition of the be ocean league with Thebes as its leader this is really what happens if you put your minds back to 4 45 in the thirty-years peace that concluded what we call the first

Peloponnesian War when the Spartans Allow the Athenians to sign and speak for all the members of its league they were giving de facto recognition and regarding the Greek the Athenians as their equals this was something that the Spartans no doubt led chiefly in this view by a jessileah they were not going to let the Thebans do it in fact we are told in a very bold action to jessileah struck the Thebans from the lists the list of those who had taken word would take part in the piece because they Insisted on this now there's a

problem about this the same story almost identically is told in 371 when we come to the attempt at another coin a rain a to bring peace to the general Greek world the whole story is told in this pretty much the same way and the upshot of the one in 371 will be the great battle of leuctra this has led some scholars to say die adores who is the source of these tales simply has screwed up it's got it wrong this is What they call a doublet somehow he projected backwards an event that really happened in

371 and has it happened twice I'm very very suspicious about modern historians who are prepared to rip up pieces of ancient historians because we know better and it just doesn't make any sense is the argument the truth is I can see no reason why they shouldn't have happened twice certainly adjusts what's his name Hammond on this would have insisted on That certainly the Spartans would have objected to it the actions that go with it strike me as being perfectly OK in 375 and when four years later a similar circumstance emerges why shouldn't the same thing

happen again I haven't really looked into this but I can imagine if you look through the whole Cold War history I'm sure you'll find many things that are happening over and over again in exactly the same way because the circumstances haven't changed so with my Characteristic gullibility I believe in the story as it is told in 375 well fighting resumes since the piece really didn't hold and the the thebans continue and the be oceans in general continue to successfully fight off the Spartans I should have mentioned in the course of this fighting soon after the

treaty there's an amazing occasion which has harbingers for the future a Spartan Army is marching in one direction a Theban Army is marching in another direction The Spartans outnumber the Thebans vary greatly in fact the Theban whole sieben force is simply the 300 men who had been formed pretty recently into a special elite fighting corr called the Sacred Band their special quality was that in addition to being excellent warriors and trained especially for their job they were homosexual lovers who stood and fought right next to each other this was just carrying forward the principle that

The Spartans had used in one way and another and it turned out to be equally successful this sacred man was a tremendous fighting force and will play a critical role in the important battle of leuctra anyway they managed to defeat in a hoplite battle a Spartan force that is greater than they are it's not a real hundred percent hoplite battle the numbers are only 300 Thebans even there's about a thousand Spartans it's the way that battle is fought is not Traditional typical it's a little peculiar so you really can't regard it as the decisive time

somebody beat a Spartan hoplite phalanx in battle that will have to wait till leuctra on the other hand it the evidence of the Ancients is that it really impressed the Greek world in general even this form of a victory over Spartan hoplites was unprecedented and it really I think kind of shook some people in terms of their confidence that the Spartans would Always win a battle like that so the fighting goes on on all the fronts that I have mentioned to you until finally we get down to 371 and in 371 the same thing happens

there is a pressure from the Persians for a general peace the Athenians are not against that idea but the same tale I told you last time there's no question that had happened at leuktra nobody doubts that and the result was a renewal of the war with the Spartans Taking the lead aggressively moving in to be OSHA as they had done every time before I think it's very worth mentioning that we don't have any case up to now up to 370 one in which to be oceans and their friends and allies march into the Peloponnesus all

the attacking has been by the Spartans in to be OSHA which means these wars have always been costly to be OSHA but not to Sparta and we'll see that the one of the things that if Pam Ananda Stu do when he Can is to reverse that situation so this brings us to the battle of leuctra leuctra is a town in southwestern be OSHA the two armies march towards each other there's a lot of maneuvering this way in that way but finally they come on to this rather small field if you you can go there today

and look at it really pretty easy to place the ancient story into the modern geography eat there's a plane between two hills went to the south and one to the north the ocean Army took up its position on the northern Hill the Spartans took up theirs on the southern hill and then finally when the daylight came this they move forward and fought each other in this field which is sort of it's it's plenty big enough for any kind of hoplite battle that you want to have but some scholars have wanted to make to explain the

battle in terms of a limited space but I think that really isn't an issue this is a sort of a typical spart As typical hoplite battle field so can we are Bertis marches on themes again it's not a jealous and I mean this looks like the culmination of a Jessa lace is n Taif even policy he's not there again ancient writers and modern scholars wonder why he wasn't there I'm prepared to take the simple-minded view if he wasn't there he couldn't have been there he must have been out of action for physical reasons because I

can't imagine any good reason why he wouldn't want to Be there for the payoff here anyway there was something in the neighborhood of ten thousand Spartan hoplites and maybe a thousand cavalry and it's the sport that could be oceanside is less clear maybe maybe six maybe seven thousand be ocean hoplite so they are outnumbered and I think that has a lot to do with the tactics that he pam Ananda's employees in fighting this battle it's a famous battle it's an important battle so I'll take a few Moments to talk about the battle itself again this

is a much-debated it's not easy to know what's going on or why it's going on but I let's start with the important point that the Thebans were outnumbered so it really was up to a Pam Ananda's to think of some way to overcome this disadvantage normal course of events six or seven thousand against 10,000 in a regular hoplite battle you can the bookies would take the game off the board i mean the especially if They're Spartans and Peloponnesians the bigger but the bigger battalions are going to win so Pam anon this comes up with certainly

just nobody can deny that he came up with some kind of plan what am I fussing about here some scholars have wanted to emphasize not the tactics of Pam Ananda's but rather the superior fighting qualities of this new Theban Democratic National Army well I certainly think that made a difference i give real credit to that element and yet I can't escape thinking that there really was a very tricky unusual strategy or tactics of operational plan used by Pam anonymous that accounts in a considerable part for the success of the thebans in this battle he lined

the normal way you line up is that the sort of the leading forces on each side take up the right wing of their phalanx that's the position of Honor and that's where you try to beat the other guy that has the consequence incidentally of Meaning that the best army doesn't fight against the best army in each case the best Army is fighting against a weaker portion of the enemy army that's not what apparent on this wanted he put his Theban forces with the 300 sacred band members at the front of it he is his own

group was at the left side of the the ocean line facing the Spartans directly now the Spartans had to realize when they saw what was going on Oh forgive me I forgot to tell you another very Important thing instead of the usual depth of the Phalanx 8 12 maybe 16 ranks epaminondas loaded his left-wing 50 men deep and that is maybe precedented but if so it's extremely rare in the past his idea apparently and then when the he started for battle he took his left wing and moved it obliquely further to the left the plan

being to flank the Spartans if they could and come at them from their vulnerable side and to do so in trim tremendous strength I think the Idea of the tremendous strength and depth was to win on that side quickly because he was weak obviously on his right I suppose that the force immediately after the Thebans what itself presents a problem because if the Thebans went sharply to the left on this occasion with their deep powerful phalanx the guys next to them probably would move with them to some degree but not at the same speed and

not the same Determination because their situation there was the danger of there being an opening right there that would have been very scary apparently a pen mohandas told the people on the right I would have thought everybody to the right of his outfit to proceed only very slowly if that's the case the Spartans then on the the Peloponnesian army on their left would have had to take some time before they could encounter the B ocean army so that the first fighting would be on the Left where Pam ananda Swan today and his hope was in

a way this is a variety of the marathon strategy remember the big thing there was the Athenians under Milt IDs hoped to win swiftly on the wings where they had greater depth they knew they would lose in the middle they just hope they would lose slower than they would win on the wings I think this is a version of the same idea and so a permanent us and his block of thebans goes to the left and I would argue in The ancient sources say this too swiftly as as the Herodotus said of the Athenians that

marathon drom oi on the run well I guess that means on the truck and so they were they want to get that fight going as fast as they could and to win it as fast as they could well that's the essential idea that they would win powerfully on the left and send the Spartans into route and thereby destroy their whole campaign now we have to account for funny things that happen Apart from the before the battle is over both sides take their cavalry from the usual position on the wings on the flanks of the Phalanx

meant either to protect your wings or to assault the other the enemy on his wing and move it to the center of the battlefield where it plays a role and so the question always is what are they doing what's this all about and one here I think one can only speculate surely it would have been a wise thing For Pam Ananda's to move his cavalry into the center of the field in front of the center of his line not in front of him but in front of the guys to his right because they too would

have had an effect of slowing down any Spartan attack where there was a vulnerability so if you take it from that point of view you could think the Spartans who definitely moved their cavalry out front did so in order to combat the Theban cavalry that would be an explanation Enough but some scholars make an argument and there's some reason to think they might be right in that the Spartans seeing what a pam anonymous was doing knew that he was trying to flank them on the right side and so this they wanted to take steps to

prevent being flanked on that side and so they did something which they tried to do at the Battle of Mantinea but it didn't happen for them they pull troops out from the center of their line sent them around Behind the Phalanx and put them out they hoped on the right wing to prevent exactly that kind of an event but to prevent this the thebans from other the oceans from charging that empty spot until it was filled they sent their cavalry up front to shield them not only to shield them but in effect to hide them

certainly the Cavalry's being out there would have kicked up a lot of dust and it they could have hoped that the Thebans Wouldn't know what was going on so that was that's the theory what is a fact is that the B ocean fat cavalry and the Spartan cavalry clashed and as I think again the bookies if this had happened would have predicted the Thebans defeated the Peloponnesians the Thebans had a superior cavalry it had to do of course with the nature of their land which is better for horses than most of Greek country and so

they drove the cavalry back into the Spartan phalanx Helping to create confusion and to break ranks and all that kind of stuff but the real payoff the real victory in the battle was one where a payment on this hoped it would be on his left flank on the Spartan right flank I don't think it's an accident that the Phalanx the Theban phalanx came swiftly to the place where the Spartan King was located Cleon Brutus and killed him and if you look at Greek battles throughout all of their history killing the general in command Is a

really good idea because when you do that you usually win have you got numbers of Curtis on that we've just got a general idea of how how often that is a decisive important element it's very frequent isn't it when you kill the general you win Curtis knows more about military history in the Greek world anybody so I have to consult it so that being the case the Spartans fought bravely and strongly around the body of their king but that only led more of Them to be killed and before very long the Spartan phalanx broke and

ran and the Thebans the oceans had won a clear-cut unmistakable blatant victory in a normal hoplite battle on a normal field and this was the shock felt around the Greek world that this had happened just changed everything there were only here's an interesting fact that tells you something else that's important about what's going on in the Greek world There were only perhaps seven hundred sparty eights in the whole battle and of these four hundred were killed that's to think about that i mean that's devastating in so many ways and it had this all kinds of

effects i did we shall see it immediately shook the control of the spartans even over the Peloponnesus it made people think the spartans were vulnerable and that they might have come to the end of the line but another interesting contrary consequence was That suddenly sparta wasn't scary but Pheebs was very scary and the Athenians who had already come to be nervous about the Thebans you notice I haven't mentioned that they were had been the allies of thieves they were not at the battle of leuctra and as a matter of fact they were clearly working with

the spartans already to check steven power and steven expansion before the battle of leuctra they stay neutral they didn't show up at the battle at all but it Tells you a very important change in the scene in in the Greek world at this time so I think it's safe to say the battle of leuctra put an end to Spartan supremacy the support and hegemony is over and now the question that awaits Greece is what happens next I think in the normal course of events prior to the build-up of this new thieves there would have been

a division of power between the states the Athenians would have used some muscle The Thebans would have used some muscle some lesser states would have emerged in the vacuum created by the destruction of pavement of Spartan power but that would have been that however given all that had happened in B OSHA the kind of leadership that existed in Thebes something amazing than happened the Thebans decided to put an end to Spartan power forever and took a number of measures to bring that about just the defeat of leuktra meant the Disintegration of the Peloponnesian League a

number of states obviously took advantage of Sparta's weakness to just pull out and get out from under Spartan control and then in the year 370 the Thebans put together a tremendous army and ultimately marched into the Peloponnesus to do what they were going to do one of the things that happen reflecting the collapse of the Spartan hegemony in the Peloponnesus was that the towns in the region of Arcadia the Mountainous region to the north of the Sparta put themselves together in the form of the Arcadian League and it is I mentioned this to you earlier

i believe it is one of the first federal leagues of a different kind from the one we've seen up to now there is no hegemony estate it is not some big state and its friends which even the B ocean league is still in that category it is in fact a collection of states that are ostensibly equal and this is entirely voluntary They are coming together these Arcadian states in order to protect themselves and through their interests against the many troubles they've had over the years and the question always is then and there's what this is

about what I'm saying that it was a new kind of ally and it reveals the fact that there was no state that was sufficiently superior to the others that to make it obvious that the capital so to speak of this new Confederation Would be that state they built a brand new city it was called I love it megalopolis that means it ran from Washington to Boston no I'm sorry it meant it meant of course it means big polis big city big state whatever you want but it was the place where the league Council met state

center and their representatives to it their business was done there and it's really quite an interesting event especially as you look ahead in the history of reason And as I told you last time that kind of thing had the remarkable influence on the thinking of the shapers of the American Constitution the Athenians attitude towards this you know you we think about all this long rivalry between Sparta and Athens that have resulted in such terrible Wars it just goes to show you what was it thomaston the 19th century British statesman I think he once said Britain

has no permanent friends or enemies only Permanent interests and I think what whether that was true or Britain are not at the time I think in we should always realize that that is true of the way States operate in an international system it is not that they don't have inclinations and long-standing friendships do have some impact and long-standing enmities have a greater impact and yet anything can happen I mean just to get some sense of that who would have believed that in the 1930s that great britain and france would join with Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union

for any purpose what ever since they especially the British had been interested in putting an end to that regime from the moment that it was invented and that Winston Churchill would be the greatest advocate of this alliance with Stalin Winston Churchill who would say if they had been a leading figure in having an invasion of Russia in 1920-21 in order to bring down the Bolshevik regime and the Churchill's answer I think to the question of why you're doing this tells you a lot about this general point I'm trying to make I'm not going to get

this exactly right i don't have Churchill's gift and my memory is fading but and he said if you know why you joining up with Stalin you know what you've been denouncing him forever he said he said if the devil no I'm sorry if Hitler invaded hell at the very least I would want to say a few Kind words about the devil in the House of Commons that ought to tell you something about the permanence of these kinds of things interests are what matter and this leads us but Athenian interests had changed Thebes was becoming a

challenge to the Athenian growth and influence and power and they did not want the Thebans now to destroy it Sparta's control the Peloponnesus and replace it with a Theban control of the Peloponnesus and that accounts both for Ypd Athens is not helping the Thebans but also in fact intriguing with states in the Peloponnesus to try to stand up to the Thebans rather than to do what might seem obvious now the Thebans will continue i'll come back to their invasion just a moment they were continuing to grow they were gaining allies in central Greece fossa seat

olya akarnania low Chris Euboea here again I'm going to be teaching you general truths about International relations that are don't seem to be part of the ordinary education and that is power has a fantastically attractive quality when a state is suddenly enormously powerful you know that I think the political scientist rules and I admit that what I just said has been known and said by many of them many times but the favorite thing is if there's a great power what happens next what happens is all the other states get together and join up to Control

that power to which the answer is sometimes a lot of times and that they have another term to consider the alternative which they call bandwagon and wagon II and that is states are attracted by that power want to get on the right side of that power join up with that power and that's what happened here where suddenly the Theban power in that area be seemed so strong that you wanted to be on that side I'm just in this terrible analogizing mood today so Please forgive me but but lest you think the study of ancient history

is not relevant to your understanding of the world today and I know none of you would be so foolish as I think that let me just point out just like what's happening in the Middle East and I'll say it before it's common wisdom so that you'll see how smart I am Syria which has been nothing but trouble for our side all this time all of a sudden seems to be behaving in a different way and Even the United States government says that the Syrians seem not to be feeding more al-qaeda people across the border into

Iraq why is that what if they found religion call I guess they had religion already but the answer is because suddenly American forces are kicking hell out of everybody in Iraq and suddenly there's a powerful American army sitting there which is right next door to iran to syria it's also right next door to iran you should Have interesting consequences to the result is that the Syrians are suddenly talking very differently now that doesn't mean that they there'll be a permanent change that will depend upon realities but it's I need to get fed so much of

gunk in a different direction the most important single element in international relations not the only one by any means but the most important one is power and the perception of where the power is and the perception of whether That power is growing or shrinking nothing is as important as that everything else contributes but doesn't have that central role well that's the situation that the Thebans have created with their victory and so they are expanding all over the place they are even stevens with great landlubbers there are even building a navy they are moving out into

the aegean sea and that's one of the things that has created this nervousness in athens and Explains the athenian behavior now comes this great invasion in the over the year three 73-69 the total force of hoplites in the army put together by epaminondas is reported to be 40,000 not there's just not a number like that in the whole fifth century basically any time before this it's just an amazing army and we are told there were some 30,000 others on the campaign who were not hoplites maybe many of them weren't even fighters but a lot of

Would have been cavalry light on the infantry and so on but in any case here are 70,000 people meaning no good to the Spartans pouring into the Peloponnesus in that year it is the largest military force reported in Greek history the leading the men in charge are these two extraordinary men epaminondas and palapa Das who repeatedly proved themselves by the way it was palapa Das who won that victory in 375 at two jireh remember there with the 300 so he has that great Victory on his record and Pam Ananda's of course is the architect of

the victory at leuktra and they just are amazing and remarkable people if you read some of those we do not have a Plutarch biography of a permanent us although he does give us a palapa des we're happy about that but the out before i get through i will try to remedy that as i tried to do in the case of Thrasybulus by bringing to your attention how great was the reputation Of a permanent us in the Greek world maybe I should just say a word about him now he he is reputed to have been a

person of great intellect apparently he was a philosopher and took that seriously and was respected gotten regarded with respect by others of that helk in that world and of course he looks it looks very much as though he is a man of political convictions of such a kind as almost to suggest political theory I mean he seems to have been Committed really to the idea of democracy as a good thing in itself on this latter point we just don't have very much evidence no nothing that he said but we do have what he did which

squares perfectly with what we are talking about it would be Simon breaks my heart they're these lies that Plutarch did not write what I would give for a life of Cleisthenes by Plutarch and similarly of a Pam Ananda's and I'm am a I'm too i don't know who knows why Plutarch did what he did but in any case it would be really fascinating in his case because of the complicated nature of his mind and his life but there he is along with palapa des leading this armed force in there they move down into Laconia the

home territory of the Spartans now the Spartans are forced to huddle in their City and to try to resist anything that comes at them they cannot go out to fight these people invading their homeland therefore their Homeland has never been invaded in anybody's memory this is out of the question nothing like this would have been possible and here they are just hiding in their City not even a walled city because it was part of their pride they don't need walls they have an army nobody can come in there and attack their city and there they

are and what does a permanent is do he does not go after them in that city because probably he has one reason would have been Fighting in the city you know urban warfare is always difficult and costly and nobody until lately is really good at it I mean I don't know how much you've paid attention to what's going on in Iraq these days in the so called surge but when you if you if you study it as a military problem and then you see how they dealt with that military problem it is one of the

really most brilliant things I have ever seen because it to be successful in this in The war I'm talking about now requires not only shrewd use of military forces for military purposes but it has to be integrated with constant political negotiation and conversation with the natives which has to be associated also with certain economic conditions being brought about so that the people who are might be on the other side can be on your side and then you can have them work for you and I've only touched on the beginning of All the complexity of that

so but in any case which until it until until that happened there are very few cases of really successful urban warfare without tremendous cost well of course before they figured out what to do in Iraq they had some tremendous cost of not figuring it out boy I'm getting at is yes I'm sure that if a parent honest had wanted to he would have been able to defeat the Spartans in their city but he would have paid a great price now there's perhaps Another consideration what he what but let me before I come to that let

me just tell you that that what but apparent honest did is bypassed the city ravaged what the countryside wherever he founded doing as much harm as he possibly could and even as this was happening and was obviously reported back to the Spartans the Spartans did not come out to fight now here's where I think once again Victor Hanson's splendid imagination comes into the picture you know what I Find to be a very persuasive explanation of what's going on and he makes this explanation based on an analogy he draws with the army of general sherman during

the American Civil War when Sherman's famous march to the sea or his march through Georgia when there is a Confederate Army to the north of where he goes but he doesn't seek them out he goes marching towards where he wants to get to doing as much damage as he possibly can destroying the food Crops animals everything you had burning down houses being as nasty and unpleasant as he can be why is the question will he be nasty a pleasant fellow not really he do know a lot about what Sherman thought he was doing because he

wrote about it Sherman apparently hated the southern slave opera see he wasn't satisfied with defeating the south as many a northerner was and then sort of letting it be what it had been before or perhaps destroying Slavery itself and leaving everything else pretty much as it had been he seems to have thought this was a terrible wicked society and if it wasn't to go back to its old bad ways it not only had to be defeated it had to be humiliated part of as his view part of the success of the South was in building

up what he would have thought of as a myth of their aristocratic superiority which made slaveholding appropriate because the people who was superior were ruling over People who were inferior and they deserved it because they were better fighters than anybody else everybody thought at the beginning of the war certainly that that the South had a better military tradition and that they were better soldier than I think they were and that they were courageous being a great military man means being courageous and all of that justified the system and provided the pride that made it possible

to work well Sherman wanted A show it wasn't so and here they were burning down houses and barns and food and the women folk having to stand there and watch it and where was the Confederate Army they didn't come down to challenging and he felt in the process he was destroying the myth that was more potent well I think he saw Hanson certainly has that right when he talks about Sherman and it's very attractive to think that maybe and on this was after the same thing Here were the Spartans cowering in their city it would

be said while a payment on this was doing as he liked with the Peloponnesus they would never again be a time where people would accept the story that the Spartans with a great fighter as the great heroes etc etc etc in any case that's what he did and then it wasn't I I think all of this is assisted by some of the things he did and some of the things that he actually said he went to Messenia and indeed he went to the Place where the Messenians had withdrawn for security in their rebellions up there

and he established or reestablished a city called masini it was powerfully fortified it was up on a mountain it was a place where you could really defend it and it became the capital of Messenia which would now be a free Messenia in which the former helots the former slaves of the spartan state would now rule their own country as they had not done for centuries and it was a Liberation and it was that was the language that a payment on dis used of it it had the marvelous psychological effects that I am speaking of and

also a very practical one here was a fortress on the flank of the Spartans which was controlled by people who hated the Spartans bitterly and that would guarantee that the Spartans would not likely gain control of the Western Peloponnesus again if you add to that that the Arcadians had suffered plenty From the Spartans and were unwilling to allow the Spartans to rise again and there was megalopolis a walled powerful city that would see to it that the Spartans would never likely be able to make their way into control of central and northern Peloponnesus again and

so all of this combination of power and the strategic use of power along with this psychological warfare that was involved brought about the permanent check on Sparta you know Sparta amazingly enough would emerge from this still an independent city still somehow taken seriously by others but never again in the position of threatening the security of other states now some of what was happening began to create account of force as it always does here was this blatantly democratic force that had been unleashed in the Peloponnesus most of which had always been oligarchic so in Arcadia there

began to be a revival of Oligarchic activity people who wanted to overthrow the regime that was being established and to restore oligarchic governments which would of course naturally be friendly to Sparta and some of these oligarchs in Arcadia began to assist the Spartans we know the Spartans were finished but they didn't know it the Greeks at the time didn't know it so that I'm just touching on the high points here in 362 by now I I should report that palapa dass was dead he had Died fighting in Thessaly against a an autocrat there by the

name of Jason from the city of Pharaoh who about and we don't know a lot except to say he got to be very powerful indeed and was pretty soon challenging both Thebes on the land and also challenging Athens to some degree at sea and he who knows how much trouble he would have made had he not died before he could do so but a parent sorry palapa des died fighting in a battle against Jason I think it was 364 So in 362 when the Thebans again put were forced to invade the Peloponnesus to put down

those forces that were working against his settlement it was only epaminondas who was in charge apparently in the Battle of Mantinea this is the Second Battle of Mantinea the first took place in the Peloponnesian War for 18 but this one in 362 apparently epaminondas used some of the very same tactics that had been successful in the in the battle of Leuctra and the Thebans won the battle of leuctra of Mantinea however epaminondas was killed in the fighting and it turned out that that was more important than anything else with both palapa deaths and epaminondas gone

Thebes never again shows that kind of special quality that brought it swiftly to power and will swiftly bring it down although we as we look at the world in 362 we should realize that Thebes remains a very formidable power and the Greeks again I want to warn you don't know that thieves isn't going to come back and with two new leaders or ten new leaders or one or whatever and become the same kind of a menace that it had been before but looking back we can see that that was the outcome so this even is

won the victory but in effect they they really lost the war because that was the end of their special quality Cicero writing about this year centuries later called epaminondas the foremost Man of Greece there is an inscription or there was an inscription on a Pam analysis statue that was erected on his death at Thebes and it is as though he was speaking it must have been taken somehow from something he said or wrote here's what he said by my plans was sparta shorn of her glory and holy messenia at last received back her children by

the weapons of thebes was messinia fortified and all Greece became independent and free now of course the Claim that everybody was seeking independence for the Greeks altona Mia is an old stale one that never really worked this is the first time that I am aware no I should that's not true the Spartans entered the Peloponnesian War claiming that they were fighting to free the Greeks but of course they immediately began enslaving as many of them as they could when they won the war but a permanent us says well we did this we accomplish this and

at the end of the Day the Greeks the the all of Greece was free he claimed sure it wasn't perfectly true but there was a lot in it and that's what he was proud of that's what he thought he was doing I think that's the important point about that quotation it tells us what he would have wanted as indeed it has worked out that way to come down as his legacy what did a payment understood did he say he increased the power of Thebes tenfold he made Thebes name ring in the Valhalla he Never heard

of L hella in the Valhalla of heroes throughout history that's not what he wanted to have said what he wanted to have said was i restored the Messenians to their land i restored them to safety I gave them freedom I left Greece free and independent Xenophon writing after his description of the Battle of Mantinea says the following and these are the last words in his Hellenic ax in his history of Greek Affairs in his time since nearly all the People of Greece have come together or had come together and form themselves in opposing mine's there

was no one who did not suppose that if a battle were fought those who proved victorious would be the rulers and those who were defeated would be their subjects while each side claimed to be victorious neither was found to be any better off than before the battle took place but there was even more confusion and disorder in Greece After the battle than before so here's a case for the the unimportance of warfare you might say for those people who want to make that case that here was all as fighting here were all the dead and

at the end of the day nothing had been settled that is often the case in war although might be said that something pretty serious had been settled by the campaign's that the Thebans had fought before the Battle of Mantinea and a bit at before the bottom Anthony and that Greece will never be the same again because of the fighting that had taken place before but as we look forward not backward it's worth noticing that that the years of competition for hegemony which go back you know at least to the days after the Persian Wars had

left Greece weakened and divided and therefore open for exploitation and even conquests by a new threat from outside the system which was not even dreamed of by the Greeks as a menace in 362 at the Battle of Mantinea and there's something to be learned in in there too I mean if you had taken a poll of the Greeks and said where are the dangers to us now what problems do we have what they would have been talking about the traditional conflicts between the Greek city-states no one I think would have used the word macedonia as

part of anything that looked scary and of course nobody would have heard the name Phillip because Philip wasn't Even King of Macedonia yet and yet within a few years Phillip would be the King of Macedonia within a couple of three decades there would suddenly be a real menace from the north that would be very threatening and we'll take a look at that next time