What if Sparta had won at Leuctra?

371 BC · Classical Greece · Battle of Leuctra · Updated 2026-10-26

In 371 BC the Theban Epaminondas beat the Spartan phalanx in open battle at Leuctra for the first time. If Sparta had held, whose would Greece have been?

What actually happened

Victorious in the Peloponnesian War, Sparta was master of Greece for more than thirty years. In 382 BC, in time of peace, it seized the Cadmea, the citadel of Thebes, and put in a garrison; in the winter of 379 exiles led by Pelopidas slipped into a banquet, killed the pro-Spartan leaders and won Thebes back. Thebes then bound the Boeotian cities into a league again, and Pelopidas led the elite Sacred Band of 300.

At a peace conference in Sparta in 371 BC, the Theban Epaminondas insisted on signing on behalf of all Boeotia, and King Agesilaus struck Thebes out of the treaty. King Cleombrotus, who had an army in Phocis, marched straight into Boeotia, and the two armies met that July on the plain of Leuctra in the territory of Thespiae. Most accounts say the Spartan side was the larger.

Epaminondas overturned convention. Instead of putting his strongest troops on the right, he massed his left wing fifty ranks deep to strike head-on at the Spartan right where the king stood, and held his weaker right back. Xenophon says the Spartan line was twelve deep. The deep Theban column and the Sacred Band crushed the king's ranks; Cleombrotus fell, and of the 700 Spartan citizens present, 400 died. It was the first time a Spartan phalanx had lost a head-on fight.

The turning point

Even on the Theban side, whether to fight was not settled. According to Diodorus, the generals of the Boeotian League were split between fighting and withdrawing, and only when Epaminondas won over the last of them did they decide to fight. The Spartan cavalry was weak and, as soon as the battle began, was driven back into its own infantry, and Xenophon even reports that there was drinking in the Spartan camp at midday. It was a battle of small chances piling up.

But Sparta's defeat also had deeper roots. As Aristotle pointed out, the number of Spartan citizens kept falling as land became concentrated in a few families, and the 400 lost at Leuctra were a loss that shrunken citizen body could never make good. Historians such as Paul Cartledge see Leuctra as the day Sparta's structural weakness was exposed all at once. Even if Sparta had won that day, the shortage of citizens would have remained.

The world that might have been

In Crown & Plough the alternative reads: the Theban left, massed fifty ranks deep, struck the Spartan king's line, but Cleombrotus held, drawing his right wing back. The right of the Boeotian allies broke first, and the Sacred Band was surrounded on the field. Sparta dissolves the Boeotian League and garrisons Thebes again. In the game Thebes becomes a Spartan vassal and its army is greatly reduced.

In the game's altered world, in 369 BC Sparta detaches the Boeotian cities one by one into separate alliances, and the helots of Messenia still work the fields of Spartan citizens. In real history Epaminondas invaded Laconia the winter after Leuctra, freed Messenia and founded Messene at the foot of Mount Ithome; in this world that city is never built. Even when Agesilaus, past eighty, dies around 361 on his way back from Egypt, there is still no city in Greece to stand up to Sparta.

How long a Spartan hegemony resting on the helots would have lasted is impossible to say. The number of citizens would have kept falling, and Athens' second maritime league and Persian gold would have tipped the scales again. Still, a Sparta that had not lost Messenia could have played master of Greece for at least another generation.

Ripples through time

Leuctra occurs only in a world where the Sicilian Expedition failed as in reality and Thebes won back the Cadmea. In a world where Athens won, Thebes becomes Athens' ally early on, so this battle never happens.

The biggest ripple comes from the north. In real history the Macedonian prince Philip was sent as a hostage to Thebes after Leuctra and grew up watching Epaminondas's army; as king he used those lessons to build the long-pike phalanx. In the game's world where Sparta won, Philip is a hostage in Sparta, comes home to be king in 359 BC, and, puzzling over how to beat the Spartan phalanx, builds a new phalanx armed with the six-metre sarissa. That Philip, in the end, heads for Chaeronea.

Play this turning point

Start in the Classical Greece era, or choose the scenario Son of the Cadmea, which begins as the Boeotian noble Euthycles. The scenario's first-generation story ends in 379 BC, but Leuctra comes as an epilogue to whichever generation is living.

In 372 BC, on the Theban side you can stand in the deep column on Epaminondas's training ground or give your horses to the cavalry to push for the real outcome, while urging that Sparta's demands be met tilts it the other way. On the Spartan side, volunteering for Cleombrotus's army pushes for a Spartan victory. The odds are set by weighing the strength of Sparta and Boeotia, and the turning point does not open if Sparta or Thebes has already vanished or if the player rules one of them.

Play this turning point → Start the scenario “Son of the Cadmea” →

The button opens the game with the Classical Greece era selected. Free in the browser, no account needed.

Questions and answers

Sources and further reading

Xenophon, Hellenica, book 6; Diodorus, Library of History, book 15; Plutarch, Life of Pelopidas. Modern accounts: Paul Cartledge, Agesilaos and the Crisis of Sparta; John Buckler, The Theban Hegemony, 371–362 BC.

Counterfactual history is informed speculation. The “real” sections describe what happened; the “might have been” sections describe one plausible alternative, including the one modelled in the game.

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