Qualla: Battle of Leuctra https://qualla.com/battle-of-leuctra en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:30 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/b/3/battle-of-leuctra-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Battle of Leuctra https://qualla.com/battle-of-leuctra Battle of Leuctra: Introduction https://qualla.com/battle-of-leuctra/ Photo credit O.Mustafin, CC0. Diodorus says a comet was seen before the battle, and that some who looked back on what happened at Leuctra believed it had been foretold. Whether the omen was real or invented after the fact, the events of 6 July 371 BC certainly looked, to anyone alive at the time, like the natural order of things being rewritten. For nearly a century the Spartan phalanx had been the most respected weapon in Greece. By sunset on a summer afternoon in Boeotia, that reputation lay among the dead on a plain outside an unremarkable village called Leuctra.

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]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/b/3/battle-of-leuctra-wp/swb3-battle-of-leuctra-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Battle of Leuctra: How They Got There https://qualla.com/battle-of-leuctra/ Photo credit Ward, Public domain. The path to the battle ran through a quarrel over signatures. According to Xenophon, the Thebans signed a treaty as 'the Thebans' but asked the next day to change their signature to 'the Boeotians', claiming leadership of the wider Boeotian league. The Spartan king Agesilaus II w...

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Image: Ward | Public domain

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/b/3/battle-of-leuctra-wp/swb3-battle-of-leuctra-how-they-got-there.mp3 0:06 2 full Battle of Leuctra: The Argument Among the Generals https://qualla.com/battle-of-leuctra/ Photo credit «ВЭС». (СПб; 1914 год)., Public domain. There were six Boeotarchs - the federal generals - present, and they were split. Three were against giving battle. They were outnumbered, perhaps 7,000 hoplites against 10,000 Spartan and allied infantry plus 1,000 cavalry, and several of their allies could not be relied upon. Th...

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Image: «ВЭС». (СПб; 1914 год). | Public domain

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/b/3/battle-of-leuctra-wp/swb3-battle-of-leuctra-the-argument-among-the-generals.mp3 0:06 3 full Battle of Leuctra: The Echelon and the Sacred Band https://qualla.com/battle-of-leuctra/ Photo credit Greece_location_map.svg: Lencer / derivative work: Uwe Dedering (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. What Epaminondas did next was a piece of military thinking that historians still teach. Greek armies traditionally placed their best men on the right wing and met an opposing right with their own weaker left. Epaminondas inverted this. He stacked his Theban infantry on the left f...

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Image: Greece_location_map.svg: Lencer / derivative work: Uwe Dedering (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/b/3/battle-of-leuctra-wp/swb3-battle-of-leuctra-the-echelon-and-the-sacred-band.mp3 0:06 4 full Battle of Leuctra: The Death of a King https://qualla.com/battle-of-leuctra/ Photo credit Eduard Rothert, Public domain. Cleombrotus was killed in the press, along with about four hundred Spartiate citizens - full Spartan citizens whose numbers, by 371 BC, had already shrunk to perhaps twelve hundred. The remaining Peloponnesian allies, watching their right wing collapse, declined to fight on. Some...

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]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/b/3/battle-of-leuctra-wp/swb3-battle-of-leuctra-the-death-of-a-king.mp3 0:06 5 full Battle of Leuctra: What Leuctra Took Away https://qualla.com/battle-of-leuctra/ Photo credit George E. Koronaios, CC BY-SA 4.0. What followed was the unraveling. Within a few years Epaminondas had marched into the Peloponnese, freed Messenia from Spartan control after three centuries of helot subjugation, and helped found the city of Megalopolis to keep Sparta penned in. The Spartiate population, already ...

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]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/b/3/battle-of-leuctra-wp/swb3-battle-of-leuctra-what-leuctra-took-away.mp3 0:06 6 full