the Theban revolt, and the Theban revolt became the Theban hegemony. The
army which achieved this under the leadership of Epaminondas, one of the
great captains of history, had already given proofs of its valour
against Xenophon and the Cyreian veterans. Still earlier it had won the
great victory of Delium (424 B.C.).
It was organized, as were the professional armies, on the accepted model
of the old armies, viz. the phalangite order, but the addition of
peltasts now made a Theban army, unlike the Spartans, capable of
operating in broken country as well as in the plain. The new tactics of
the phalanx, introduced by Epaminondas, embodied, for the first time in
the history of war, the modern principle of local superiority of force,
and suggested to Frederick the Great the famous "oblique order of
battle." Further, the cavalry was more numerous and better led than that
of Peloponnesian states. The professional armies had well understood the
management of cavalry; Xenophon's handbook of the subject is not without
value in the 20th century. In Greek armies the dearth of horses and the
consequent numerical weakness of the cavalry prevented the bold use of
the arm on the battlefield (see CAVALRY). But Thebes had always to deal
with nations which possessed numerous horsemen. Jason of Pherae, for
instance, put into the field against Thebes many thousands of Thessalian
horse; and thus at the battle of Tegyra in 375 the Theban cavalry under
Pelopidas, aided by the _corps d'elite_ of infantry called the Sacred
Band, carried all before them. At Leuctra Epaminondas won a glorious
victory by the use of his "oblique order" tactics; the same methods
achieved the second great victory of Mantineia (362 B.c.) at which
Epaminondas fell. Pelopidas had already been slain in a battle against
the Thessalians, and there was no leader to carry on their work. But the
new Greek system was yet to gain its greatest triumphs under Alexander
the Great.