Leuctra 371 BC
By Murray Dahm
ISBN: 978-1472843517 Osprey Publishing (2021) – £15.99
(Full disclosure: Dahm is a friend and uses several of the photographs I took of the battlefield in the book.) Osprey’s newest addition to its Campaign series – Murray Dahm’s Leuctra 371 BC: The Destruction of Spartan Dominance – is long overdue. The book dives deep on the climactic battle between Sparta and Thebes that saw the final breaking of Sparta’s power and set the stage, along with the Second Battle of Mantinea less than a decade later, for Macedonian hegemony over Greece.
Thermopylae, a battle that changed absolutely nothing, is practically a household word. Leuctra, a battle that permanently shifted the balance of power in the Mediterranean, remains almost entirely unknown outside scholarly circles. There is surprisingly little written about it in the popular press, and what analysis exists is usually in books on related topics (most often the military history of Sparta). The battle absolutely merits its own monograph, and
