Reflections on the Rise and Fall of the Ancient Republicks / Adapted to the Present State of Great Britain

by Edward Wortley Montagu

CHAPTER III.
OF THEBES.

The accounts of the earlier ages of this ancient republick are so enveloped in fable, that we must rather apply for them to the poets than to the historians. Pausanias gives us a list of sixteen kings of this country, down from Cadmus inclusive, who evidently belong to the fabulous times of the heroes.[180] He seems indeed to acknowledge as much, since he confesses, that as he could find no better account of their origin, he was obliged to take up with fable.[181] After the death of Xanthus,[182] the last of those kings, the Thebans, as the same author relates, disgusted at monarchy, changed the form of their government into a republick. But it is in vain to search for the cause, or manner how this revolution was effected either in Pausanias, or any other historian. All we can learn of the Thebans or Bœotians from history,[183] is, that they were remarkable for their dulness and stupidity, even to a proverb,[184] that, until the time of Pelopidas and Epaminondas, they made as poor a figure in the art of war as in the sciences: that their form of government was democratick, and that, as usually happens in that kind of government, they were divided into factions.

After the famous peace of Antalcidas, by which the honour and true interest of Greece was sacrificed to the ambition of the Spartans, whatever state refused to come into their measures, was condemned to feel the effects of their resentment. They had compelled the Thebans to accede to that treaty, though it deprived them of the dominion over Bœotia; and afterwards, by the perfidy of the aristocratick faction, got possession of their citadel, and reduced them to a state of absolute subjection. This was the wretched state of the Thebans, until they were delivered both from foreign and domestick slavery, and raised to a height of power superior to every other state of Greece by the virtue of Pelopidas and Epaminondas. I have selected therefore this revolution as the most interesting, and most worthy of our attention; because it exhibits a convincing proof, that a brave and warlike people are not the produce of any particular spot,[185] but are the growth of every place and country, where the natives are trained up in a true sense of shame at mean and base actions, and inspired with that manly courage which arises from the emulation after what is just and honourable. And that those who are taught to dread infamy more than the greatest dangers, prove the most invincible, and the most formidable to an enemy. It instructs us too, that the most depressed, and most abject state may be extricated from the calamities of oppression, and raised to superior dignity and lustre by a very small number of virtuous patriots, whilst the spirit of liberty yet remains, and the people second the efforts of their leaders with unanimity and vigour.

The Thebans, by a fatal error in politicks, had chosen Ismenias and Leontidas, who were at that time heads of two opposite parties, their supreme annual magistrates. Ismenias was a steady assertor of the liberty and just rights of the people, and laboured to preserve a due balance in the powers of the constitution. Leontidas wanted to engross the whole power into his own hands, and to govern, by a small, but select number of his own creatures. It was impossible for union and harmony to subsist between two men, who had views so diametrically opposite. Leontidas therefore, who found his party the weakest, bargained by a private convention with Phæbidas, the Spartan general, to deliver up his country to the Lacedæmonians upon condition that the government should be lodged in himself, and such as he should think proper to intrust. The agreement was made, and Leontidas conveyed Phæbidas with a strong body of troops into the citadel, at a time when the poor Thebans, wholly unapprehensive of any danger from the Spartans, with whom they had lately concluded a peace, were celebrating a publick religious festival. Leontidas, now sole governor, gave an immediate loose to his passions. He seized his colleague Ismenias, and, by the assistance of the Spartans, procured him to be tried, condemned and executed, for caballing against the state. A pretence however stale, yet constantly urged by every iniquitous administration against all who have the resolution to oppose their measures. The party of Ismenias, upon the first news of the imprisonment of their chief, fled the city, and were afterwards banished by a publick decree. A strong proof of the fatal lengths a faction will run, which is composed of those profligate wretches whose sole aim is their own private emolument! Yet such a faction, in all free states, when once luxury and corruption are introduced, is generally the most numerous, and most prevalent. Athens, not long before, had been betrayed to the Spartans in the same manner, and on the same infamous terms by a detestable faction, composed of the most abandoned of her citizens, and groaned under the same species of tyranny until she was freed by the great Thrasybulus. And, I believe, we have not yet forgot the strong apprehensions we were lately under, that a certain free state, upon the continent, was on the point of being sold to a powerful neighbour by a similar faction, and by a like iniquitous contract. We must remember too, after what manner that scheme was defeated by the glorious efforts of patriotism and publick spirit. I shall make no apology for this digression, because I thought the remark too apposite to be omitted.

The honest citizens, who had fled Athens, enraged to see their country thus tricked out of her liberty, and groaning under the most ignominious servitude, determined to set her free, or perish in so glorious an attempt. The scheme was well concerted, and as boldly executed by Pelopidas, who entering the city with a small number of the most resolute of his party in disguise, destroyed Leontidas and his colleague Archias, with the most dangerous of his faction; and, by the assistance of Epaminondas and his friends,[186] with the additional aid of a large body of Athenians, recovered the citadel. The Spartans,[187] at the first news of this surprising event, entered the Theban territories with a powerful army to take vengeance of the authors of this rebellion, as they termed it, and to reduce Thebes to its former subjection. The Athenians, conscious of their own weakness, and the mighty power of Sparta, which they were by no means able to cope with, not only renounced all friendship with the Thebans, but proceeded with the utmost severity against such of their citizens as favoured that people. Thus the Thebans, deserted by their allies, and destitute of friends, appeared to the rest of Greece as devoted to inevitable destruction. In this desperate situation of affairs, the virtue and abilities of these two great men shone forth with greater lustre. They began by training their countrymen to the use of arms as well as the shortness of the time would permit, and inspiring them with a hatred of servitude, and the generous resolution of dying in defence of the liberty and glory of their country. As they judged it imprudent to hazard a decisive battle against the best troops in the world, with their new raised militia, they harrassed the Spartans with daily skirmishes to instruct their men in military discipline, and the trade of war. By this method they animated the minds of their people with the love of glory, and inured their bodies to the fatigues of war by exercise and labour, whilst they acquired experience and courage by those frequent encounters. Thus, as Plutarch remarks, when these able generals, by never engaging rashly, but watching every favourable opportunity, had fleshed the Thebans, like young stag-hounds, upon their enemies, and rendered them staunch by tasting the sweets of victory, and bringing them off in safety, they made them fond of the sport, and eager after the most arduous enterprises. By this able management they defeated the Spartans at Platea and Thespia,[188] where they killed Phæbidas who had before so treacherously surprised their citadel, and again routed them at Tenagra, the Spartan general himself falling by the hand of Pelopidas. Flushed with this success, the Thebans feared no enemy, however superior in number; and the battle of Tegyra soon after raised the reputation of their arms to a degree unknown before.[189] In this action the brave Pelopidas, with a small body of horse, and no more than three hundred foot, broke through, and dispersed a body of Spartans consisting of above three times that number, made a terrible slaughter of the enemy, killed both their generals upon the spot, took the spoils of the dead, raised a trophy on the field of battle, and brought his little army home in triumph. Here the astonished Greeks first saw the Spartans defeated by a much inferior number, and by an enemy too whom they had always held in the greatest contempt. They had never, until that time, been beaten by equal, and rarely by much superior numbers, and, until that fatal day, were justly reputed invincible. But this action was only the prelude to that decisive stroke at Leuctra, which gave a fatal turn to the Spartan affairs, and stripped them of that dominion which they had so long exercised over the rest of Greece. For this series of success, though it greatly elated the Thebans, yet rather enraged than discouraged the Spartans. The Athenians, jealous of the growing power of Thebes, struck up a peace with their ancient rivals, in which all the Grecian states were included, except the Thebans, who were given up a sacrifice to the Spartan vengeance. Cleombrotus, joint king with Agesilaus, entered Bœotia with the largest, and finest army the Spartans had ever sent into the field. The great Epaminondas engaged them at Leuctra with a body of six thousand Thebans, which scarce equalled a third part of their enemies, but the admirable disposition he made, joined to the skill and dexterity of Pelopidas, and the bravery of their troops supplied the defect of numbers. Cleombrotus was slain on the spot, his army totally routed, and the greatest slaughter made of the native Spartans that had ever happened until that day, with the loss only of three hundred Thebans. Diodorus Siculus gives a concise account of this action in these remarkable words,[190] “that Epaminondas, being reduced to the necessity of engaging the whole confederate force of the Lacedæmonians, and their allies, with only a handful of his city militia, gained so complete a victory over those hitherto invincible warriors, that he slew their king Cleombrotus, and cut off the Spartan division, which was opposed to him, almost to a man.”

This victory gave so happy a turn to the affairs of the Thebans, that their alliance was now as much courted as before it had been despised and shunned. The Arcadians applied to them for succours against the Spartans. Epaminondas and Pelopidas were sent with a powerful army to their assistance. At the head of the joint forces these two great men entered Laconia, and appeared with a hostile army at the gates of Sparta. The first sight of that kind ever seen by that haughty people. The masterly conduct of Agesilaus, and the desperate valour of the Spartans saved the city, but could not prevent the ravage of their territories by the two Theban generals, who restored the Messenians to their kingdom, of which the Spartans had deprived them near three hundred years before, defeated the Athenians, who came to the assistance of the Spartans, and returned home with glory.

The Theban arms were now so terrible, and their power grown so formidable, that whilst some states applied to them for protection, and others for assistance, the Macedonians referred the disputes about the succession to that crown to their decision, and gave hostages as a security that they would abide by their determination. The chief of these hostages was the famous Philip, father of Alexander the Great, who employed his time so well, under those two able masters, in the art of war, that from them he acquired that military knowledge which proved afterwards so fatal to all Greece in general. Thus the publick virtue of two private citizens not only restored Thebes to her former liberty, but raised her to a much more respectable rank than she had ever held before amongst the Grecian republicks.

But this eminent, and newly acquired degree of power was but of short duration. Pelopidas had freed the Thessalians from the insults of Alexander the Pherean; but going to him afterwards, accompanied only by Ismenias, to compose some differences, he was not only unjustly made prisoner, but treated with the most spiteful cruelty by that perfidious tyrant. The Thebans, enraged at this treacherous act, sent an army against the tyrant, under the command of two new generals, who returned with loss and dishonour. The command was again committed to Epaminondas, who, by the terror of his name alone, brought the tyrant to reason, and procured the release of his friend Pelopidas and Ismenias. But the tyrant soon after renewing his usual depredations upon the Thessalians, Pelopidas was once more sent with forces to their assistance. The two armies came soon to action, when Pelopidas, blinded by resentment, and eager after revenge, rushed into the right wing, where the tyrant commanded in person, and fell, covered with wounds, in the midst of his surrounding enemies. His death however was not unrevenged, for his troops, quite furious at the loss of a general they so much revered and loved, routed the enemy, and sacrificed three thousand of them to his manes.

Though the death of this truly great man was an irretrievable loss to Thebes, yet Epaminondas still survived, and whilst he lived, the good fortune and power of his country remained unaltered. But new disturbances breaking out not long after, Epaminondas, at the head of his Thebans, broke again into Peloponnesus, eluded the vigilance of Agesilaus, and advanced into the very suburbs of Sparta. But as they had just before received intelligence of his approach by a messenger from Agesilaus, they were so well prepared for his reception, that he judged proper to retire, and, in his return, fell unexpectedly upon the Spartans and their allies at Mantinea. The disposition of his forces upon this occasion is esteemed a masterpiece of generalship; nor was his valour inferior to his conduct. He routed and made a terrible slaughter of the Spartans, but, pushing on too eagerly to complete his victory, he received a mortal wound in his breast, and was carried to his tent. As soon as he recovered his speech, and was satisfied that his shield was safe, and the Thebans were victors, he ordered the broken part of the weapon to be drawn out of his wound, and died rejoicing at the good fortune of his country. Thus fell the incomparable Epaminondas, who, as Polybius observes, overcame his enemies, but was overcome by fortune.[191] The same judicious historian,[192] in his remarks on the different constitutions of the ancient republicks, observes, “that the flourishing state of the Thebans was but of short duration, nor was their decay gradual, because their sudden rise was not founded on right principles. He affirms that the Thebans took the opportunity of attacking the Spartans when the imprudence and haughtiness of that people had made them quite odious to their allies; and that they had acquired amongst the Greeks their high reputation for valour by the virtue and abilities of one or two great men, who knew how to make the best use of those unexpected incidents, which so fortunately offered. He adds, that the sudden change in their affairs made it quickly appear to all, that their remarkable success was not owing to the system of their government, but to the publick virtue of those who were at the head of the administration. For that the power and grandeur of the Thebans arose, flourished, and fell with Epaminondas and Pelopidas is too evident, he says, to be denied. Whence he concludes, that the splendid figure the Thebans at that time made in the world must not be ascribed to their civil polity, but to those two great men only.” I have hitherto considered them only in the light of virtuous citizens, and able generals; perhaps a short sketch of their characters as patriot-statesmen may not be unacceptable nor uninstructing.