Thebes: The third order

The Sacred Band of Thebes:The motivation for the use of such an “Army of Lovers” in battle is also stated by Plutarch: “For men of the same tribe or family little value one another when dangers press; but a band cemented by friendship grounded upon love is never to be broken, and invincible; since the lovers, ashamed to be base in sight of their beloved, and the beloved before their lovers, willingly rush into danger for the relief of one another.”
According to Plutarch, Gorgidas initially distributed the Sacred Band of Thebes throughout his battle lines as an elite to strengthen the others’ resolve, but later Pelopidas, after the Band had fought successfully at Tegyrae, used it as a sort of personal guard. For about 33 years, the Sacred Band of Thebes remained an important part of the Greek infantry. Its defeat came at the Battle of Chaeronea, the decisive battle in which Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great ended the independence of the Greek city-states. Philip had been held as a hostage in Thebes, and had learned his military tactics there. The remainder of the Theban army fled when faced with the overwhelming forces of Philip and Alexander, but the Sacred Band, surrounded, held their ground and fell where they stood.

Thebes took part in the battle of Chæronea (338), where the victory of Philip and his 18 years old son Alexander over the Greek coalition marked the end of Greek autonomy. Thebes was once more deprived of its leadership over Boeotian cities and Philip installed a Macedonian garrison in Thebes. Three years later, in 335, Thebes tried to rebel against Macedon upon rumors that Alexander who, one year earlier had succeeded his assassinated father, had been killed in Thracia. But Alexander, who was in fact alive and well, took no time to return to Thebes, quench the rebellion and raze the city, with the exception of its temples and Pindar’s house.

Thebes by itselt never was an important maritim potency , however during several years was the leading city of the beotian levy.

Archeological excavations in and around Thebes have revealed cyst graves dated to Mycenaean times containing weapons, ivory, and tablets written in Linear B. It seems safe to infer that it was one of the first Greek communities to be drawn together within a fortified city, that it owed its importance in prehistoric – as in later days – to its military strength. As a fortified community, it attracted attention from the invading Dorians, and the fact of their eventual conquest of Thebes lie behind the stories of the successive legendary attacks on that city.
In the late 6th century BC the Thebans were brought for the first time into hostile contact with the Athenians, who helped the small village of Plataea to maintain its independence against them, and in 506 repelled an inroad into Attica. The aversion to Athens best serves to explain the unpatriotic attitude which Thebes displayed during the great Persian War. The victorious Greeks subsequently punished Thebes by depriving it of the presidency of the Boeotian League, and an attempt by the Spartans to expel it from the Delphic amphictyony was only frustrated by the intercession of Athens. In 457 Sparta, needing a counterpoise against Athens in central Greece, reversed her policy and reinstated Thebes as the dominant power in Boeotia. The great citadel of Cadmea served this purpose well by holding out as a base of resistance when the Athenians overran and occupied the rest of the country (457–447). In the Peloponnesian War the Thebans, embittered by the support which Athens gave to the smaller Boeotian towns, and especially to Plataea, which they vainly attempted to reduce in 431, were firm allies of Sparta. In 424 at the head of the Boeotian levy they inflicted a severe defeat upon an invading force of Athenians at the Battle of Delium, and for the first time displayed the effects of that firm military organization which eventually raised them to predominant power in Greece.
After the downfall of Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian War the Thebans, finding that Sparta intended to protect the states which they desired to annex, broke off the alliance. In 404 they had urged the complete destruction of Athens, yet in 403 they secretly supported the restoration of its democracy in order to find in it a counterpoise against Sparta. A few years later, influenced perhaps in part by Persian gold, they formed the nucleus of the league against Sparta. In the consequent wars with Sparta the Theban army, trained and led by Epaminondas and Pelopidas, proved itself the best in Greece. Some years of desultory fighting, in which Thebes established its control over all Boeotia, culminated in 371 in a remarkable victory over the pick of the Spartans at Leuctra. The winners were hailed throughout Greece as champions of the oppressed. They carried their arms into Peloponnesus and at the head of a large coalition permanently crippled the power of Sparta. Similar expeditions were sent to Thessaly and Macedonia to regulate the affairs of those regions.
However the predominance of Thebes was short-lived.With the death of Epaminondas at Mantinea in 362 the city sank again to the position of a secondary power. In a war with the neighbouring state of Phocis (356–346) it could not even maintain its predominance in central Greece, and by inviting Philip II of Macedon to crush the Phocians it extended that monarch’s power within dangerous proximity to its frontiers. A revulsion of feeling was completed in 338 by the orator Demosthenes, who persuaded Thebes to join Athens in a final attempt to bar Philip’s advance upon Attica. The Theban contingent lost the decisive battle of Chaeronea and along with it every hope of reassuming control over Greece. An unsuccessful revolt in 335 against his son Alexander was punished by Macedon and other Greek states by the severe sacking of the city, except, according to tradition, the house of the poet Pindar.