…the Mantineans to Athens and Sparta. The…
362 BCE
…the Mantineans to Athens and Sparta.
The outbreak of civil war in the Arcadian league in 362 brings Epaminondas once more to the head of a large allied army in the Peloponnese.
Leading the Boeotians and their Argive allies against Sparta, Athens, and their allies in an encounter on the Mantineian Plain, Epaminondas repeats on a large scale the tactics of Leuctra, cleverly outmaneuvering the Spartan troops, and is once more victorious but dies of a wound on the field of battle.
The great Battle of Mantinea (“Second Mantinea,” to distinguish it from the events of 418) is a technical victory for Thebes in the strictly military sense, but (as Xenophon notes) it is actually indecisive: Epaminondas' death permanently crushes Theban hopes of leadership in Greece.