ebes needed no allies. It had two men of warlike genius,
Epaminondas and Pelopidas. These were to prove in themselves worth a
host of allies. The citizens were with them. Great as was the danger,
the Thebans sustained Epaminondas in his bold action, and made him
general of their army. He at once marched to occupy a pass by which it
was expected the Spartans would come. Sparta at that moment had a strong
army under Cleombrotus, one of its two kings, in Phocis, on the frontier
of Boeotia. This was at once ordered to march against defiant Thebes.

Cleombrotus lost no time, and with a military skill which Spartans
rarely showed he evaded the pass which Epaminondas held, followed a
narrow mountain-track, captured Creusis, the port of Thebes, with twelve
war-ships in the harbor, and then marched to a place called Leuctra,
within an easy march of Thebes, yet which left open communication with
Sparta by sea, by means of the captured port.

The Thebans had been outgeneralled, and were dismayed by the result. The
Spartans and their king were full of confidence and joy. All the
eloquence of Epaminondas and the boldness of Pelopidas were needed to
keep the courage of their countrymen alive and induce them to march
against their foes. And it was with much more of despair than of hope
that they took up at length a position on the hilly ground opposite the
Spartan camp.

The two armies were not long in coming to blows. The Spartans and their
allies much exceeded the Thebans in numbers. But Epaminondas prepared to
make the most of his small force by drawing it up in a new array, never
before seen in Greece.

Instead of forming the narrow line of battle always before the rule in
Greek armies, he placed in front of his left wing Pelopidas and the
Sacred Band, and behind them arranged a mass of men fifty shields deep,
a prodigious depth for a Grecian host. The centre and right were drawn
up in the usual thin lines, but were kept back on the defensive, so that
the deep column might join battle first.

Thus arrayed, the army of Thebes marched to meet its foe, in the valley
between the two declivities on which the hostile camps were placed. The
cavalry met first, and the Theban horsemen soon put the Spartan troop to
flight. Then the footmen came together with a terrible shock. Pelopidas
and his Sacred Band, and behind them the weight of the fifty shields,
proved more than the Spartans, with all their courage and discipline,
could endure