Editing Pelopidas (section)

===Boeotarch===
[[File:Charon placed his only son in the arms of Pelopidas.gif|thumb|upright|Charon placed his only son in the arms of Pelopidas]]
In this and 12 subsequent years, he was elected ''[[boeotarch]]'', or warleader,<ref>L Brice, ''Greek Warfare'' (2012) p. 117</ref> and around 375 BC, he routed a much larger Spartan force at the [[Battle of Tegyra]] (near [[Orchomenus (Boeotia)|Orchomenus]]).<ref>T Duff ed., ''Plutarch: The Age Of Alexander'' (Penguin 2011) p. 60-2</ref> This victory he owed mainly to the valour of [[Sacred Band of Thebes|the Sacred Band]], an elite corps of 300 seasoned soldiers. At the [[Battle of Leuctra]] (371 BC), he contributed greatly to the success of [[Epaminondas]]'s new tactics by the rapidity with which he made the Sacred Band close with the Spartans. At Leuctra, Epaminondas, a brilliant and intuitive general, used the [[oblique order]] for the first time. After the battle at Leuctra, Thebes began to replace Sparta as the leading city of Greece.{{Citation needed|date=April 2020}}

In 370 BC, he accompanied his close friend Epaminondas as ''boeotarch'' into the Peloponnese, where, by re-founding as an independent city [[Messene]] Sparta's former dependency, they were able to consolidate their success and permanently deprive Sparta of its hegemonic power.<ref name="J Griffin 1986 p. 149">J Griffin et al eds., ''The Oxford History of the Classical World'' (Oxford 1986) p. 149</ref> On their return, both generals were accused, unsuccessfully, of having retained their command beyond the legal term. In fact, the democrats and some aristocrats of Thebes acknowledged that Pelopidas and Epaminondas were the two most capable and important personalities of their city. Both were trying to establish a state that would unite Greece under the Theban hegemony – what [[Xenophon]] called a policy "continuously direct towards securing supremacy in Greece".<ref name="Xenophon, 1966 p. 309">Xenophon, ''[[Hellenica|A History of my Times: Hellenica]]'' (Penguin 1966) p. 309</ref>