EPAMINONDAS, e-pam"in-on'das, The ban general and statesman: b. about 418 B.C.: d. Mantineia, Arcadia, Greece, 362 B.C. He was distinguished for the friendship, existing between him and Pelopidas, whose life he had saved in 385 at Mantineia. He was sent to Sparta 371 B.C. to represent Thebes in negotiat ing a peace with the Athenian envoys. As the Spartans refused to recognize Thebes as the representative of Bceotia, the Theban were ex cluded from the peace. Cleombrotus was sent by the Spartans to invade Bceotia, but was de feated at Leuctra (371 a.c.), chiefly through the tactics of Epaminondas. Two years after Epaminondas and Pelopidas were made Bceotarchs. They detached several nations from the alliance of Lacediemon, and delivered the Messenians, whose capital they rebuilt. Epaminondas then marched with his army to Sparta; but this city 'was so bravely and skil fully defended by Agesilaus that the Theban hero retreated. An accusation was brought against him on his arrival in Thebes, because he and Pelopidas had kept the Bceotarchate be yond the legal time; the accusation was literally true, but the infringement of the law was justi fied by his services, and after having pleaded his own cause, he was acquitted. In 368 he com
pelled Sicyon and Pellene to relinquish the Lacedxmonian alliance, and in the same year served in a Theban army sent into Thessaly to rescue Pelopidas, who was kept a prisoner at Pherm. In the following year he commanded an expedition with the same object which was successful. In 362 he was compelled to make head against a formidable coalition of states, in cluding Athens and Sparta. His tactics were never more brilliant and successful than in this campaign, but in the battle of Mantineia he was killed at the moment of victory. Consult Col croft, J. W., (Epaminondas of Thebes' (in Dublin University Magazine, Vol. XL, p. 34, Dublin 1852) ; Cornelius Nepos,
Epami nondae' ; Pomtow, L., (Das Leben des Epami nondas> (Berlin 1870) ' • North, Sir T., ed. and trans., (The Lives of Epaminondas, Philip of Macedonia, etc.' (in