History Summarized: Thebes’ Greatest Accomplishment Ever

This story, this ludicrous, insane story, is near and dear to my heart. It also conveniently explains what went on in the century between the Peloponnesian War and Philip II conquering Greece — this story is pretty much it. Speaking of, I hope to cover all that Macedonian shenaniganery at ~some point~

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[CastorRidicule]

Comedy is tragedy plus time. By that logic, antiquity is a comedic gold mine.

[dezopenguin]

And to add to the comedy: because Sparta apparently didn't _want_ Thebes to make a petty amendment in the peace documents that would make them look better, got themselves into a war that they _lost_ and ended up taking a solid hit to their prestige and influence.

[CapitanHDM]

Kings of Sparta: so how did the battle go
Spartan General: lost
Kings of Sparta: "is this like an out-of-season April Fool's joke"

[paigek]

This is even funnier when you realize that the patron gods of Thebes were Apollo and Dionysus.

[Zerpderp]

I just realized that Greek history is basically YouTube drama in a nutshell.

[tomwolf]

Athens: I swear on my people to peace!
Sparta: I swear on my people and my allies to peace!
Thebes: I swear on my people to peace, my allies can swear on themselves to peace!
2 HOURS LATER
Thebes: Hey, can I reswear to inlcude my allies to my oath.
Sparta: N-no, you can't reswear, your oath is set in stone!
Thebes: War it is then!
Athens: Aren't we supposed to bee making peace?
Sparta: Uh, yeah, that's why we've gathered h-
Thebes:

[martijnvanweele]

Reality is often crazier than anything we can come up with. I once took a class with a professor in law who told us that he has to _tone down_ certain real-life examples he gives on his tests to not make them sound completely unrealistic.

[avnerim]

So hissy fit does actually work. But only if you have a really good tactician and a good strong army. -- . -- . . . . Nice!

[lukevankleef]

4:58 I swear to god, I honestly misheard that as: ''His strongest spiders.'' and I just imagined an army of spiders fighting the Spartans. Epaminondas: ''Spiders! A giant legion of spiders!''

[Cappy-Bara]

I went over Leutra in military history. Three things from the battle, 1) refused flank, which prevented flanking long enough to do the battle, 2) deep array, Thebes stacked a huge number of people behind their best so when they broke the line it was like a dam breaking, 3) gay alliance, the top Theban warriors, to guarantee their loyalty to each other to protect each other became mass lovers, because you fight harder when defeat means the death of your lovers

[dr_smrt]

Thebe's best fighters, the Sacred Band, were actually 150 pairs of gay men. The idea was that if one man saw his lover fall, he would fight twice as hard.

[derpionderpson]

I mean... that kinda sums up everything about Ancient Greece: really impressive... and really, really stupid.

[somedude]

Thebans : We're gonna have a war on Sparta. Epomindas, what great strategy will you use to try and defeat them ?
Epominodas : maybe I'll just exchange the placement of my
The entirety of Greece : SHIT

[CollinMcLean]

Random Spartan Officer:How did they manage to defeat our near invincible phalanx?! We had our Strongest on the right and our weakest on the left!
Random Spartan Soldier:The put their strongest on our left side...
Random Spartan Officer: ... such genius military strategy...

[lavendero]

Blue : Thebes is my favourite bs nonsense in history
Me: what about Walpole

[oolooo]

This represents ancient history in general : just to show that you are strong, even in the most petty and meaningless way, you are willing to sacrifice the lives of thousands of young men .

[kasey]

Yet no one ever talks about Thebes outside of Ancient Literature. All the focus is on Athens, Sparta, and Persia. Thebes was actually kinda awesome

[helen_lenito]

I'm from Greece and I love your guys videos.You make history so much cooler and fun I mean I already loved history but you get the point. Keep up the amazing work

[adamlatosinski]

Seeing the title, I thought that the Thebes' greatest accomplishment was inventing the armchair.

[stPCFerret]

"If it's stupid, but it works, then it's not stupid any more." -- The Mighty Jingles