Second battle of Mantineia

The Second Battle of Mantineia was held in 362 BC. Chr. Between of Thebes listed Boeotians and their allies (including the Arcadian cities Tegea and Megalopolis ) on one hand and Sparta , Athens and its allies (including the other Arcadian towns around Mantinea other hand held). It marks the end of Theban hegemony over Greece.

The immediate cause was the conflict over the split in the Arcadian League , the deeper cause of the dispute over which since the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC. Prevailing dominance of Thebes.

Neither side emerged as a clear winner from the battle of Mantineia, in which Theben's outstanding general Epameinondas was killed. Although the losses of the troops led by the Spartians were greater, Thebes was unable to compensate for their losses. But the heaviest of all was the death of the victor of Leuktra. The conflict was thereupon ended with a general peace due to the general tiredness of war , which on the one hand established the autonomy and equal rights of all Greek cities (and confirmed the independence of Messenia from Sparta), on the other hand allowed each city to keep the areas it owned at the end of the fighting. From 362 until the appearance of King Philip II of Macedon , there was no longer a clear hegemon in Greece.

The ancient historian Hermann Bengtson saw in the battle and in the year 362 an epoch boundary, since at that time the failure of the Greek polis manifested itself. None of them was in a position to politically reorganize Greece through the formation of hegemony. Rather, the poleis would have worn out in the struggle of all against all. Even together they were not capable of such a reorganization, since ultimately neither the Panhellenic idea nor the idea of general peace would have led to a constructive policy.

literature

Franz Georg Friedrich von Kausler, Atlas des plus memorables Batailles, Combats et Sièges des temps anciens, du moyen age et de lage modern p. 3 digitized