The surgeons, on examining the wound of Epaminondas, with the spear-head yet sticking in it, pronounced that he must die as soon as that was withdrawn. He first inquired whether his shield was safe; and his shield-bearer, answering in the affirmative, produced it before his eyes. He next asked about the issue of the battle, and was informed that his own army was victorious.[759] He then desired to see Iolaidas and Daiphantus, whom he intended to succeed him as commanders; but received the mournful reply, that both of them had been slain.[760] “Then (said he) you must make peace with the enemy.” He ordered the spear-head to be withdrawn, when the efflux of blood speedily terminated his life.
Of the three questions here ascribed to the dying chief, the third is the gravest and most significant. The death of these two other citizens, the only men in the camp whom Epaminondas could trust, shows how aggravated and irreparable was the Theban loss, not indeed as to number, but as to quality. Not merely Epaminondas himself, but the only two men qualified in some measure to replace him, perished in the same field; and Pelopidas had fallen in the preceding year. Such accumulation of individual losses must be borne in mind when we come to note the total suspension of Theban glory and dignity, after this dearly-bought victory. It affords emphatic evidence of the extreme forwardness with which their leaders exposed themselves, as well as of the gallant resistance which they experienced.
The death of Epaminondas spread rejoicing in the Lacedæmonian camp proportioned to the sorrow of the Theban. To more than one warrior was assigned the honor of having struck the blow. The Mantineans gave it to their citizen Machærion; the Athenians, to Gryllus son of Xenophon; the Spartans, to their countryman Antikrates.[761] At Sparta, distinguished honor was shown, even in the days of Plutarch, to the posterity of Antikrates, who was believed to have rescued the city from her most formidable enemy. Such tokens afford precious testimony, from witnesses beyond all suspicion, to the memory of Epaminondas.
How the news of his death was received at Thebes, we have no positive account. But there can be no doubt that the sorrow, so paralysing to the victorious soldiers on the field of Mantinea, was felt with equal acuteness, and with an effect not less depressing, in the senate-house and market-place of Thebes. The city, the citizen-soldiers, and the allies, would be alike impressed with the mournful conviction, that the dying injunction of Epaminondas must be executed. Accordingly, negotiations were opened, and peace was concluded,—probably at once, before the army left Peloponnesus. The Thebans and their Arcadian allies exacted nothing more than the recognition of the statu quo; to leave everything exactly as it was, without any change or reactionary measure, yet admitting Megalopolis, with the Pan-Arcadian constitution attached to it,—and admitting also Messênê as an independent city. Against this last article Sparta loudly and peremptorily protested. But not one of her allies sympathized with her feelings. Some, indeed, were decidedly against her; to such a degree, that we find the maintenance of independent Messênê against Sparta ranking shortly afterwards as an admitted principle in Athenian foreign politics.[762] Neither Athenians, nor Eleians, nor Arcadians, desired to see Sparta strengthened. None had any interest in prolonging the war, with prospects doubtful to every one; while all wished to see the large armies now in Arcadia dismissed. Accordingly, the peace was sworn to on these conditions, and the autonomy of Messênê guaranteed, by all, except the Spartans; who alone stood out, keeping themselves without friends or auxiliaries, in the hope for better times,—rather than submit to what they considered as an intolerable degradation.[763]
Under these conditions, the armies on both sides retired. Xenophon is right in saying, that neither party gained anything, either city, territory, or dominion; though before the battle, considering the magnitude of the two contending armies, every one had expected that the victors, whichever they were, would become masters, and the vanquished, subjects. But his assertion,—that “there was more disturbance, and more matter of dispute, in Greece, after the battle than before it,”—must be interpreted, partly as the inspiration of a philo-Laconian sentiment, which regards a peace not accepted by Sparta as no peace at all,—partly as based on the circumstance, that no definite headship was recognized as possessed by any state. Sparta had once enjoyed it, and had set the disgraceful example of suing out a confirmation of it from the Persian king at the peace of Antalkidas. Both Thebes and Athens had aspired to the same dignity, and both by the like means, since the battle of Leuktra; neither of them had succeeded. Greece was thus left without a head, and to this extent the affirmation of Xenophon is true. But it would not be correct to suppose that the last expedition of Epaminondas into Peloponnesus was unproductive of any results,—though it was disappointed of its great and brilliant fruits by his untimely death. Before he marched in, the Theban party in Arcadia, (Tegea, Megalopolis, etc.), was on the point of being crushed by the Mantineans and their allies. His expedition, though ending in an indecisive victory, nevertheless broke up the confederacy enlisted in support of Mantinea; enabling Tegea and Megalopolis to maintain themselves against their Arcadian opponents, and thus leaving the frontier against Sparta unimpaired. While therefore we admit the affirmation of Xenophon,—that Thebes did not gain by the battle either city, or territory, or dominion,—we must at the same time add, that she gained the preservation of her Arcadian allies, and of her anti-Spartan frontier, including Messênê.
This was a gain of considerable importance. But dearly, indeed, was it purchased, by the blood of her first hero, shed on the field of Mantinea; not to mention his two seconds, whom we know only from his verdict,—Daiphantus and Iolaidas.[764] He was buried on the field of battle, and a monumental column was erected on his tomb.
Scarcely any character in Grecian history has been judged with so much unanimity as Epaminondas. He has obtained a meed of admiration,—from all, sincere and hearty,—from some, enthusiastic. Cicero pronounces him to be the first man of Greece.[765] The judgment of Polybius, though not summed up so emphatically in a single epithet, is delivered in a manner hardly less significant and laudatory. Nor was it merely historians or critics who formed this judgment. The best men of action, combining the soldier and the patriot, such as Timoleon and Philopœmen,[766] set before them Epaminondas as their model to copy. The remark has been often made, and suggests itself whenever we speak of Epaminondas, though its full force will be felt only when we come to follow the subsequent history,—that with him the dignity and commanding influence of Thebes both began and ended. His period of active political life comprehends sixteen years, from the resurrection of Thebes into a free community, by the expulsion of the Lacedæmonian harmost and garrison, and the subversion of the ruling oligarchy,—to the fatal day of Mantinea (379-362 B.C.). His prominent and unparalleled ascendency belongs to the last eight years, from the victory of Leuktra (371 B.C.). Throughout this whole period, both all that we know and all that we can reasonably divine, fully bears out the judgment of Polybius and Cicero, who had the means of knowing much more. And this too,—let it be observed,—though Epaminondas is tried by a severe canon: for the chief contemporary witness remaining is one decidedly hostile. Even the philo-Laconian Xenophon finds neither misdeeds nor omissions to reveal in the capital enemy of Sparta,—mentions him only to record what is honorable,—and manifests the perverting bias mainly by suppressing or slurring over his triumphs. The man whose eloquence bearded Agesilaus at the congress immediately preceding the battle of Leuktra,[767]—who in that battle stripped Sparta of her glory, and transferred the wreath to Thebes,—who a few months afterwards, not only ravaged all the virgin territory of Laconia, but cut off the best half of it for the restitution of independent Messênê, and erected the hostile Arcadian community of Megalopolis on its frontier,—the author of these fatal disasters inspires to Xenophon such intolerable chagrin and antipathy, that in the two first he keeps back the name, and in the third, suppresses the thing done. But in the last campaign, preceding the battle of Mantinea (whereby Sparta incurred no positive loss, and where the death of Epaminondas softened every predisposition against him), there was no such violent pressure upon the fidelity of the historian. Accordingly, the concluding chapter of Xenophon’s ‘Hellenica’ contains a panegyric,[768] ample and unqualified, upon the military merits of the Theban general; upon his daring enterprise, his comprehensive foresight, his care to avoid unnecessary exposure of soldiers, his excellent discipline, his well-combined tactics, his fertility of aggressive resource in striking at the weak points of the enemy, who content themselves with following and parrying his blows (to use a simile of Demosthenes[769]) like an unskilful pugilist, and only succeed in doing so by signal aid from accident. The effort of strategic genius, then for the first time devised and applied, of bringing an irresistible force of attack to bear on one point of the hostile line, while the rest of his army was kept comparatively back until the action had been thus decided,—is clearly noted by Xenophon, together with its triumphant effect, at the battle of Mantinea; though the very same combination on the field of Leuktra is slurred over in his description, as if it were so commonplace as not to require any mention of the chief with whom it originated. Compare Epaminondas with Agesilaus,—how great is the superiority of the first,—even in the narrative of Xenophon, the earnest panegyrist of the other! How manifestly are we made to see that nothing except the fatal spear-wound at Mantinea, prevented him from reaping the fruit of a series of admirable arrangements, and from becoming arbiter of Peloponnesus, including Sparta herself!
The military merits alone of Epaminondas, had they merely belonged to a general of mercenaries, combined with nothing praiseworthy in other ways,—would have stamped him as a man of high and original genius, above every other Greek, antecedent or contemporary. But it is the peculiar excellence of this great man that we are not compelled to borrow from one side of his character in order to compensate deficiencies in another.[770] His splendid military capacity was never prostituted to personal ends: neither to avarice, nor ambition, nor overweening vanity. Poor at the beginning of his life, he left at the end of it not enough to pay his funeral expenses; having despised the many opportunities for enrichment which his position afforded, as well as the richest offers from foreigners.[771] Of ambition he had so little, by natural temperament, that his friends accused him of torpor. But as soon as the perilous exposure of Thebes required it, he displayed as much energy in her defence as the most ambitious of her citizens, without any of that captious exigence, frequent in ambitious men, as to the amount of glorification or deference due to him from his countrymen. And his personal vanity was so faintly kindled, even after the prodigious success at Leuktra, that we find him serving in Thessaly as a private hoplite in the ranks, and in the city as an ædile or inferior street-magistrate, under the title of Telearchus. An illustrious specimen of that capacity and goodwill, both to command and to be commanded, which Aristotle pronounces to form in their combination the characteristic feature of the worthy citizen.[772] He once incurred the displeasure of his fellow-citizens, for his wise and moderate policy in Achaia, which they were ill-judged enough to reverse. We cannot doubt also that he was frequently attacked by political censors and enemies,—the condition of eminence in every free state; but neither of these causes ruffled the dignified calmness of his political course. As he never courted popularity by unworthy arts, so he bore unpopularity without murmurs, and without angry renunciation of patriotic duty.[773]
The mildness of his antipathies against political opponents at home was undeviating; and, what is even more remarkable, amidst the precedence and practice of the Grecian world, his hostility against foreign enemies, Bœotian dissentients, and Theban exiles, was uniformly free from reactionary vengeance. Sufficient proofs have been adduced in the preceding pages of this rare union of attributes in the same individual; of lofty disinterestedness, not merely as to corrupt gains, but as to the more seductive irritabilities of ambition, combined with a just measure of attachment towards partisans, and unparalleled gentleness towards enemies. His friendship with Pelopidas was never disturbed during the fifteen years of their joint political career; an absence of jealousy signal and creditable to both, though most creditable to Pelopidas, the richer, as well as the inferior, man of the two. To both, and to the harmonious coöperation of both, Thebes owed her short-lived splendor and ascendency. Yet when we compare the one with the other, we not only miss in Pelopidas the transcendent strategic genius and conspicuous eloquence, but even the constant vigilance and prudence, which never deserted his friend. If Pelopidas had had Epaminondas as his companion in Thessaly, he would hardly have trusted himself to the good faith, nor tasted the dungeon, of the Pheræan Alexander; nor would he have rushed forward to certain destruction, in a transport of phrensy, at the view of that hated tyrant in the subsequent battle.
In eloquence, Epaminondas would doubtless have found superiors at Athens; but at Thebes, he had neither equal, nor predecessor, nor successor. Under the new phase into which Thebes passed by the expulsion of the Lacedæmonians out of the Kadmeia, such a gift was second in importance only to the great strategic qualities; while the combination of both elevated their possessor into the envoy, the counsellor, the debater, of his country,[774] as well as her minister at war and commander-in-chief. The shame of acknowledging Thebes as leading state in Greece, embodied in the current phrases about Bœotian stupidity, would be sensibly mitigated, when her representative in an assembled congress spoke with the flowing abundance of the Homeric Odysseus, instead of the loud, brief, and hurried bluster of Menelaus.[775] The possession of such eloquence, amidst the uninspiring atmosphere of Thebes, implied far greater mental force than a similar accomplishment would have betokened at Athens. In Epaminondas, it was steadily associated with thought and action,—that triple combination of thinking, speaking, and acting, which Isokrates and other Athenian sophists[776] set before their hearers as the stock and qualification for meritorious civic life. To the bodily training and soldier-like practice, common to all Thebans, Epaminondas added an ardent intellectual impulse and a range of discussion with the philosophical men around, peculiar to himself. He was not floated into public life by the accident of birth or wealth,—nor hoisted and propped up by oligarchical clubs,—nor even determined to it originally by any spontaneous ambition of his own. But the great revolution of 379 B.C., which expelled from Thebes both the Lacedæmonian garrison and the local oligarchy who ruled by its aid, forced him forward by the strongest obligations both of duty and interest; since nothing but an energetic defence could rescue both him and every other free Theban from slavery. It was by the like necessity that the American revolution, and the first French revolution, thrust into the front rank the most instructed and capable men of the country, whether ambitious by temperament or not. As the pressure of the time impelled Epaminondas forward, so it also disposed his countrymen to look out for a competent leader wherever he was to be found; and in no other living man could they obtain the same union of the soldier, the general, the orator, and the patriot. Looking through all Grecian history, it is only in Perikles that we find the like many-sided excellence; for though much inferior to Epaminondas as a general, Perikles must be held superior to him as a statesman. But it is alike true of both,—and the remark tends much to illustrate the sources of Grecian excellence,—that neither sprang exclusively from the school of practice and experience. They both brought to that school minds exercised in the conversation of the most instructed philosophers and sophists accessible to them,—trained to varied intellectual combinations and to a larger range of subjects than those that came before the public assembly,—familiarized with reasonings which the scrupulous piety of Nikias forswore, and which the devoted military patriotism of Pelopidas disdained.