Comments by "" (@RedXlV) on "History Summarized: Thebes’ Greatest Accomplishment Ever" video.

  1. In addition to putting his best troops right up against Sparta's, Epaminondas also stacked those troops ridiculously deep. A typical Greek phalanx was 8 ranks deep. ie each guy on the front line had 7 other soldiers behind him. When phalanxes collided, those ranks would be pushing forward against the backs of the men in front of them, thus combining their strength against the opposing phalanx who did the same. But Epaminondas had the Thebans on the left flank stacked 50 deep. So each 8 Spartans had 50 Thebans pushing against them. This weakened the Thebans' own right flank, but that was up against the conscripted soldiers of Sparta's conquered "allies", who didn't even want to fight. Once the front line on the Spartan right flank started to fall, it was an absolute stampede. And as soon as Sparta's allies saw the Spartans losing, they noped the hell out of there.
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  2. In addition to putting his best troops on the left flank to go directly against Sparta's best, Epaminondas also heavy backed them up by stacking his left flank numerically. He knew the Spartan left flank was made up of troops conscripted form the cities that Sparta had conquered, and thus didn't even want to fight for Sparta. He correctly predicted that those conscript troops wouldn't attack unless it was already clear Sparta was winning. So he thinned out the Theban phalanx on that side, while making his left flank 50 ranks deep. By comparison, a typical phalanx (as the Spartans were using) was 8 ranks deep. So when the best troops of both sides collided, the Spartans were locally outnumbered by more than 6 to 1.
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