Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome (24 page)

ing the decade of Theban hegemony, see also D. M. Lewis, J. Boardman, S. Horn-

blower, and M. Ostwald,
The Cambridge Ancient History: The Fourth Century b.c.,
vol. 6

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 187–208 (J. Roy).

For specialists, almost all the ancient evidence concerning Epaminondas is collated

(in Italian) by M. Fortina,
Epaminonda
(Turin: Società Editrice Internazional, 1958), and

(in German) by H. Swoboda, s.v. “Epameinondas,” in A. Pauly, G. Wissowa, W. Kroll,

K. Witte, K. Mittel haus, and K. Ziegler, eds.
Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Al-

tertumswissenschaft: Neue Bearbeitung
(Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1894–1980), 10:2674–707.

Notes

1 See Alfredo Bonadeo, “Montaigne on War,”
Journal of the History of Ideas
46, no. 3

(July–September 1985): 421–22. Cicero
Tusculanae Disputationes
1.2.4; Ephorus (in Dio-

dorus 15.88.2–4). It should be noted that young student Gen. George Patton admired

Epaminondas as a model of military and ethical excellence: “Epaminondas was with-

out doubt the best and one of the greatest Greeks who ever lived, without ambition,

with great genius, great goodness, and great patriotism; he was for the age in which

he lived almost a perfect man.” See Victor Davis Hanson,
The Soul of Battle
(New York:

Anchor Paperbacks, 2001), 283.

2 There are still no biographies of Epaminondas in English, an understandable situa-

tion in light of the loss of the Plutarch’s
Epaminondas
, the relative neglect of Boeotia in

our sources, and our reliance for fourth-century Greek history on Xenophon’s
Hellenica

and
Agesilaus
, which so often short Epaminondas. But two well-documented accounts

that collate almost all the scattered ancient literary citations surrounding his life can

be found in M. Fortina,
Epaminonda
(Turin: Società Editrice Internazional, 1958); and

H. Swoboda, s.v. “Epameinondas,” in
Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertum-

swissenschaft: Neue Bearbeitung
, ed. A. Pauly, G. Wissowa, W. Kroll, K. Witte, K. Mittel-

haus, and K. Ziegler, vol. 10 (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1894–1980), 2674–707.

3 On the nature of agrarian egalitarianism in rural classical Boeotia that predated

the fourth-century establishment of the more radical democracy of Epaminondas and

The Doctrine of Preemptive War
113

Pelopidas, see Victor Hanson
, The Other Greeks
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University

of California Press, 1998), 207–10.

4 There are several accounts of the rise of the Theban hegemony after the Boeotians’

break with Sparta following their successful alliance against Athens in the Pelopon-

nesian War. A narrative of events is found in J. Buckler,
The Theban Hegemony
, (Cam-

bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), especially his summation at 220–27. See

also D. M. Lewis, J. Boardman, S. Hornblower, and M. Ostwald,
The Cambridge Ancient

History: The Fourth Century b.c.
, vol. 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994),

187–208 (J. Roy). We should remember that Thebes “medized” during the Persian War,

fighting against the Greeks at the battle of Plataea. On the Athenian stage, a macabre

mythology typically was associated with Thebes, as the incest, self-mutilation, fratri-

cide, suicide, and sacrilege accorded the dead of the Oedipus cycle attest.

5 On some of the events of the period, see J. T. Hooker,
The Ancient Spartans
(Lon-

don: Dent, 1980), 22–211. Thebes had demanded of Sparta autonomy for its Pelopon-

nesian subservient allies, but it resisted reciprocal Spartan calls to allow the cities of

Boeotia to be independent of Thebes, on the somewhat strained logic that they were

already democratic and thus free, and as fellow Boeotians apparently needed group

solidarity to resist oligarchic and foreign challenges.

6 For the Spartan invasions of Boeotia and the various responses to these serial Spar-

tan attacks, see M. Munn,
The Defense of Attica
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University

of California Press, 1993), 129–83, and especially Paul Cartledge,
Agesilaos and the Crisis

of Sparta
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 228–32.

7 For a good account of the battle of Leuctra and its strategic ramifications, see J. K.

Anderson,
Military Theory and Practice in the Age of Xenophon
(Berkeley and Los Angeles:

University of California Press, 1993), 193–202; C. Hamilton,
Agesilaus and the Failure of

Spartan Hegemony
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 211–14.

J. Buckler,
Aegean Greece in the Fourth Century
(Leiden: Brill, 2003), 293, n. 56, has

a contentious note about my own criticisms of his earlier, and I still think mistaken,

reconstructions of Leuctra (Victor Hanson, “Epameinondas, the Battle of Leuktra

[371 BC], and the ‘Revolution’ in Greek Battle Tactics,”
Classical Antiquity
7 [1988]: 190–

207). Buckler fails to grasp that demonstrating that none of Epaminondas’s tactics at

Leuctra per se (the combined use of cavalry and infantry, a supposed reserve force

of hoplites, an oblique advance, putting the better contingents on the left, or the use

of a deep phalanx) were in themselves novel is not the same as denying military in-

sight and genius to Epaminondas in combining at Leuctra
previously known
military

innovations.

8 For details of the invasion, see Buckler,
Theban Hegemony
, 71–90; Hanson,
Soul

of Battle
, 72–94; and D. R. Shipley,
Plutarch’s Life of Agesilaos: Response to Sources in the
Presentation of Character
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 336–49. The main ancient accounts of the invasion of 370–369 are found at Xenophon
Hellenica
6.5.25–32;
Agesilaos

2.24; Plutarch
Agesilaos
31–32;
Pelopidas
24; Diodorus 15.62–65; and Pausanias 4.26–7, 9.13–15. See Hamilton,
Agesilaus and the Failure of Spartan Hegemony
, 220–31.

9 The size of the Theban-led force and the length of the invasion are under dispute;

see the discussions in Swoboda,
Epameinondas
, 2687, 40. Ancient estimates ranged from

50,000 to 70,000 troops, both heavy and light infantry along with auxiliaries—one of

114 Hanson

the largest musters in the history of the Greek city-state. For the number of Messenian

helots, see T. Figueira, “The Demography of the Spartan Helots,” in
Helots and Their

Masters in Laconia and Messenia: Histories, Ideologies, Structures
, ed. Nino Luraghi and

Susan E. Alcock (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 193–239, and in the

same volume, W. Scheidel, “Helot Numbers: A Simplified Model,” 240–47. The prob-

lem is compounded by the existence of helots in both Messenia and Laconia, the pau-

city of historical references, and dispute over agricultural production models. Older

estimates of about 250,000 Messenian helots may be too high.

10 For B. H. Liddell Hart (
Strategy
[New York: Praeger, 1967], 34–37), Epaminondas’s

invasion of Messenia was one of the first examples in history of what he labeled the

“indirect approach.” For Hart, the favored way of conducting grand strategy was to

avoid crippling losses in pitched and often serial battles through outflanking enemies’

armies and attacking their infrastructure far to the rear.

11 For a description of the liberation of the helots and the founding of the new fortified

citadel at Messene, see most recently Nino Luraghi,
The Ancient Messenians: Constructions

of Ethnicity and Memory
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2008), 209–52. Luraghi

points out that the Messenians may not have been ethnical y or linguistical y al that dis-

tinct from the Spartans, and most likely established the notion of a historical y distinct

Messenian identity right before and after their liberation by Epaminondas.

12 For more ideas about the degree of planning and forethought involved in Epa-

minondas’s decision to continue on to Messene after failing to cross the Eurotas

and storm the Spartan acropolis, see H. Delbrück
, History of the Art of War
(English

translation by Walter J. Renfroe of
Geschichte der Kriegskunst im Rahmen der politschen

Geschichte
), 4 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), 1:165–70; G. Roloff,

Problem aus der griechischen Kriegsgeschichte
(Berlin: E. Ebering, 1903), 11–59; and Hanson,

Soul of Battle
, 72–94.

13 For a good analysis of Xenophon’s ambiguity about the genius of his contem-

porary Epaminondas, see H. D. Westlake, “Individuals in Xenophon’s
Hellenica
,” in

Essays on the Greek Historians and Greek History
, 213–16 (Manchester, UK: Manchester

University Press, 1969).

14 Thucydides 6.18.3, in
The Landmark Thucydides
, ed. R. Strassler, trans. Richard

Crawley (New York: Touchstone, 1996). Note that the Syracusan democratic leader

Athenagoras, in fear of rumors of an impending Athenian invasion of Sicily, tried in

vain to rally the Syracusans themselves to preempt: “It is necessary to punish an enemy

not only for what he does, but also beforehand for what he intends to do, if the first to

relax precaution would not also be the first to suffer” (6.39.5).

15 A preemptive attack is initiated by one side due to the perceived threat of im-

minent attack by another party. The initiator believes that there is an advantage in

striking first, or at least that striking first is preferable to surrendering the initiative to

the enemy. See D. Reiter, “Exploding the Powder Keg Myth: Preemptive Wars Almost

Never Happen,”
International Security
20, no. 2 (Autumn 1995): 6–7. See also J. S. Levy,

“Declining Power and the Preventive Motivation for War,”
World Politics
40, no. 1 (Oc-

tober 1987): 90; R. Schweller, “Domestic Structure and Preventive War: Are Democra-

cies More Pacific?,”
World Politics
44, no. 2 (January 1992): 247; and G. H. Quester, “200

Years of Preemption,”
Naval War College Review
60, no. 4 (Autumn 2007): 16. There is

The Doctrine of Preemptive War
115

a good historical review of the strategies in S. van Evera,
“
Offense, Defense, and the

Causes of War
,
”
International Security
22, no. 4 (Spring 1998): 9.

16 Thucydides 1.118.2, 4.92.5. Again, preemptive wars are waged out of the expecta-

tion of an imminent attack; preventive wars hinge on the expectation of the relative

decline in a state’s position. Besides the question of the temporal proximity of the

challenge, preemptive threats consist of an opponent’s current capabilities; preventive

threats lie in an opponent’s future resources. And while the preventor is often the stron-

ger state, the preemptor tends to be the weaker

17 Thucydides 2.2 (Theban attack on Plataia), 4.92.5 (Pagondas’s call to strike first).

For the tragic history of Thespiae, see Victor Hanson, “Hoplite Obliteration: The Case

of the Town of Thespiai,” in
Ancient Warfare: Archaeological Perspectives
, ed. John Car-

men and Anthony Harding (London: Stroud, 1999), 203–18.

18 On the domestic debate whether to preempt, and the financial incentives offered

by the Peloponnesians, see Buckler,
Theban Hegemony
, 70–76, and J. Roy, “Arcadia and

Boeotia in Peloponnesian Affairs, 370–362 B.C.,”
Historia
20 (1971): 569–99; and in gen-

eral, Xenophon
Hellenica
6.5.9–20, and see 4.7.11; Diodorus 62–63; Plutarch
Agesilaus
30.1;
Pelopidas
24. 1–2; and Pausanias 9.14.2.

19 We don’t know at what particular point Epaminondas’s arrival in winter 369 in

Mantineia to help the Arcadians evolved into a subsequent campaign south to attack

the homeland of Sparta, and then, after he failed to storm the Spartan acropolis, to

enter Messenia to free the helots and found Messene. While our sources seems to sug-

gest an ad hoc method of decision making, and a formal conference of allies at Man-

tineia (e.g., Xenophon
Hellenica
6.5.22–23; Diodorus 15.62.4–5; Plutarch
Agesilaus
31.1–2) at which the Thebans jettisoned their initial worries about the physical difficulties of

entering Laconia, it is likely that the Thebans had some notion before they entered the

Peloponnese that their stay would be a long one and would transcend the initial goal of

guaranteeing the safety of the newly founded fortress at Mantineia.

20 We have very little ancient information about the route, the nature of the march,

or the number of allies who continued on into Messene. On the founding of the city in

369 B.C., see Carl A. Roebuck,
A History of Messenia from 369 to 146 b.c.
(Chicago: Univer-

sity of Chicago Press, 1941), 32–40; Christian Habicht,
Pausanias’ Guide to Ancient Greece

(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985), 36–63.