Editing Epaminondas (section)

===Legacy===
In some ways Epaminondas dramatically altered the face of Greece during the 10 years in which he was the central figure of Greek politics. By the time of his death, Sparta had been humbled, Messenia freed, and the Peloponnese completely reorganized. In another respect, however, he left behind a Greece no different from that which he had found; the bitter divides and animosities that had poisoned international relations in Greece for over a century remained as deep as or deeper than they had been before Leuctra. The brutal internecine warfare that had characterized the years from 432 BC onwards continued unabated until all the states involved were defeated by Macedon.{{citation required|date=January 2022}}

At Mantinea, Thebes had faced down the combined forces of the greatest states of Greece, but the victory brought it no spoils. With Epaminondas removed from the scene, the Thebans returned to their more traditional defensive policy, and within a few years, Athens had replaced them at the pinnacle of the Greek political system. No Greek state ever again reduced Boeotia to the subjection it had known during the Spartan hegemony, but Theban influence faded quickly in the rest of Greece.{{sfn|Roy|2000|pp=207{{ndash}}208}} Finally, at [[Battle of Chaeronea (338 BC)|Chaeronea]] in 338 BC, the combined forces of Thebes and Athens, driven into each other's arms for a desperate last stand against Philip of Macedon, were crushingly defeated, and Theban independence was put to an end. Three years later, heartened by a false rumor that Alexander had been assassinated, the Thebans revolted; Alexander squashed the revolt, then destroyed the city, slaughtering or enslaving all its citizens. A mere 27 years after the death of the man who had made it preeminent throughout Greece, Thebes was wiped from the face of the Earth, its 1,000-year history ended in the space of a few days.{{citation required|date=January 2022}}

Epaminondas, therefore, is remembered both as a liberator and a destroyer. He was celebrated throughout the ancient Greek and Roman worlds as one of the greatest men of history. [[Cicero]] eulogized him as "the first man, in my judgement, of Greece,"{{sfn|Cawkwell|1972|p=254}} and Pausanias records an honorary poem from his tomb:{{sfn|Pausanias|1965|p=239}}

{{Poem quote
|text=<!-- or: 1= -->By my counsels was Sparta shorn of her glory,
  And holy Messene received at last her children.
By the arms of Thebes was Megalopolis encircled with walls,
  And all Greece won independence and freedom.
|char=
|sign=
|source=<!-- or 4= -->
|title=<!-- or: 3= -->
|style=<!-- standard CSS style goes here -->
}}

Epaminondas's actions were certainly welcomed by the Messenians and others whom he assisted in his campaigns against the Spartans. Those same Spartans, however, had been at the center of resistance to the Persian invasions of the 5th century BC, and their absence was sorely felt at Chaeronea; the endless warfare in which Epaminondas played a central role weakened the cities of Greece until they could no longer hold their own against their neighbors to the north. As Epaminondas campaigned to secure freedom for the Boeotians and others throughout Greece, he brought closer the day when all of Greece would be subjugated by an invader. [[Victor Davis Hanson]] has suggested that Epaminondas may have planned for a united Greece composed of regional democratic federations, but even if this assertion is correct, no such plan was ever implemented. [[Simon Hornblower]] asserts that Thebes' great legacy to fourth century and Hellenistic Greece was federalism, "a kind of alternative to imperialism, a way of achieving unity without force", which "embodies a representative principle".{{sfn|Hornblower|2006|p=236}}

For all his noble qualities, Epaminondas was unable to transcend the Greek city-state system, with its endemic rivalry and warfare, and thus left Greece more war-ravaged but no less divided than he found it. Hornblower asserts that "it is a sign of Epaminondas' political failure, even before the battle of Mantinea, that his Peloponnesian allies fought to reject Sparta rather than because of the positive attractions of Thebes".{{sfn|Hornblower|2006|p=236}} On the other hand, Cawkwell concludes that "Epaminondas must be judged not in relation to these inevitable limitations of Boeotian power. To have established the power of Boeotia and ended the Spartan domination of the Peloponnese was the most and the best that a Boeotian could have done."{{sfn|Cawkwell|1972|p=275}}