In 371 BCE, King Cleombrotus I led a Spartan army through Phocian passes into Boeotia after Thebes’ exclusion from the peace. Bronze flashed along narrow roads; the column aimed for a quick demonstration of authority. It found Epaminondas instead.
What Happened
Orders followed signatures—or their absence. With the peace conference broken on the question of Boeotia, King Cleombrotus I took command of a Spartan-led force and advanced north. The route from Phocis into Boeotia threaded through constricting valleys, where sound carries: the rattle of spear-butts on shields, the clipped commands of Spartan enomotarchs, the lowing of pack animals [18][4].
Cleombrotus had a reputation different from Agesilaus’s iron image, but the mission left little room for nuance. The march had a political purpose as much as a military one: show up near Thebes, offer terms, accept submission, and return south before harvests suffered. The army’s bronze caught the sun on the slopes above the Boeotian plain. Towns like Thespiae watched; Thebes prepared [18].
The Theban commanders—Epaminondas among them—read the move with practiced eyes. They had repulsed invasions in 378 and 377 by avoiding decisive battle under bad terms. Now, with the league solid and cavalry trained, they could choose ground. The village of Leuctra, south of Thebes and west of Thespiae, offered the space they needed and the proximity they wanted [18].
Cleombrotus pressed on. The passes opened onto the rolling country near Leuctra, and the Spartan column deployed. The sky was clear, the air heavy with dust and heat. This was to be an assertion dressed as a battle. Instead, it became a battle that undressed an assertion: that Spartan arms could always coerce compliance twelve shields deep [4][14].
Why This Matters
The march placed a Spartan king and the prestige of a regime within striking range of the most prepared enemy they had yet faced. It converted legal isolation into physical confrontation and ensured that any result—victory or defeat—would carry political consequences for alliances across Greece [18].
Within the theme of the prestige economics of alliances, the campaign risked the currency that kept Sparta’s network solvent. A triumph would have reconfirmed that Spartan presence equals obedience. A defeat, as it turned out, broadcast the opposite, and creditors—Sparta’s allies—would call in their political loans [14][18].
In the broader narrative, Cleombrotus’s march is the last step before the tactical innovation of Leuctra met the Spartan myth. It is the movement that turns a diplomatic insult into a battlefield test, the path by which Agesilaus’s policy became Cleombrotus’s problem—and Sparta’s undoing [4][18].
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