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The Theban hegemony lasted from the Theban
victory over the Spartans at Leuctra in 371 to their defeat of a coalition of
Peloponnesian armies at Mantinea in 362, though Thebes sought to maintain its
position until finally eclipsed by the rising power of Macedon in 346.
Externally, the way was paved for Theban ascendancy by the collapse of Athenian
power in the
Peloponnesian War (431–404), through the weakening of the Spartans by
their oliganthropia (demographic decline) and by the inconclusive Corinthian War
(395–386). Internally, the Thebans enjoyed two temporary military
advantages: The leaders of the Theban oligarchy at the time, Epaminondas and
Pelopidas, were fully committed to an aggressive foreign policy and could be
relied on to win any battle and The same leaders had instituted tactical
improvements in the Theban heavy infantry (e.g. longer spears, the use of a
wedge-shaped formation of spearmen), which had yet to catch on among their
rivals.
Theban hegemony:
The Thebans had traditionally enjoyed the hegemony of the Boeotian League, the
oligarchical federation of Aeolic-speaking Greeks to the immediate north-west
of Athenian-dominated Attica. Their brief rise to power outside the Boeotian
Plain began in 373 when the Boeotians defeated and destroyed the town of
Plataea, strategically important as the only Athenian ally in Boeotia. This was
taken as a direct challenge by the previous hegemonic power, the Spartans, who
gambled on restoring their waning ascendancy by a decisive defeat of the
Thebans. At Leuctra, in Boeotia, the Thebans comprehensively defeated an
invading Spartan army. Out of 700 Spartan citizen-soldiers present, 400 died at
Leuctra. After this, the Thebans systematically dominated Greece. In the south,
they invaded the Peloponnese to liberate the Messenians and Arcadians from
Spartan overlordship and set up a pro-Theban Arcadian League to oversee
Peloponnesian affairs. In the north, they invaded Thessaly, to crush the
growing local power of Pherae and took the future Philip II of Macedon hostage,
bringing him to Thebes. Pelopidas, however was killed at Cynoscephalae, in
battle against troops from Pherae (though the battle was actually won by the
Thebans). The Thebans overstretched themselves strategically and, in their
efforts to maintain control of the north, their power in the south
disintegrated. The Spartan king, Agesilaus II, scraped together an army from
various Peloponnesian towns dissatisfied with Theban rule and managed to kill
but not defeat Epaminondas in the Battle of Mantinea, but not to re-establish
any real Spartan ascendancy. This was if anything a Pyrrhic victory for both
states. Sparta lacked the manpower and resources to make any real attempt at
regaining her empire and Thebes had now lost both of the innovative leaders who
had allowed her rise to dominance and was similarly reduced in resources to the
point where that dominance could not be guaranteed. The Thebans sought to
maintain their position through diplomacy and their influence at the
Amphictyonic council in Delphi, but when this resulted in their former allies
the Phocians seizing Delphi and beginning the
Third Sacred War
(c. 355), Thebes proved too exhausted to bring any conclusion to the conflict.
The war was finally ended in 346 BC, by the forces not of Thebes, or any of the
city-states, but of Philip of Macedon, to whom the city-states had grown
desperate enough to turn. This signalled the rise of Macedon within Greece and
finally brought to an end a Theban hegemony which had already been in decline.
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