Spartan Mora regiments at Battle of Plataea

[Paullus Scipio]

Paralus wrote:

Absolutely fascinating. Leuktra was the batle that destroyed Spartan military hegemony throughout Greece yet is only a "bloody draw"? I'd suggest that the majority of blood spilled was homoioi and, given the Spartans fled the field (Xenophon's thoroughly excusatory description notwithstanding), the result was an overwhelming victory for Thebes.

....I was speaking militarily, as I had hoped I made clear - while Spartan losses may have been heavier ( "almost a thousand" to probably "300" on the Theban side), and they withdrew from the field - we need not read too much into Diodorus' and Plutarch's "fled" and Diodorus' "not less than 4,000 Lacedaemonians fell" as typical exaggeration/spin from a Theban viewpoint ( and Xenophon, of course, writes from a pro-Spartan viewpoint).

What is clear from all sources is that:
*The Spartans withdrew behind the ditch of their camp, and reformed with many wishing to renew the battle and recover the dead, rather than formally concede the battle and request their dead under a truce (though they ultimately did this)
* The Thebans did not pursue them
* Hearing that Spartan re-inforcements were on the way ( Prince Archidamus with the other two Morai and allies from Sparta), the Thebans allowed the Spartans to depart unmolested ( Epaminondas gave the famous excuse that he would rather fight the next battle in Lacedaemon than in Boeotia - indicating that he realised that the battle had not been decisive and had been a 'Pyrrhic' victory, though Boeotia was "saved" - a 'bloody draw' was sufficient to end the Lacedaemonian invasion. He knew the War would continue, as it did)
* The Spartan Army was not destroyed, and continued operations, gaining some measure of revenge at second Mantinea with the death of Epaminondas (362 BC) - another 'bloody draw' .

Now, though Leuktra was not decisive militarily in reality, itself; that is not to say that the long term Strategic effect was not decisive. All Greece was astonished, because it was the cream of the Spartans themselves who had been defeated ( the 'Homioi') with large casualties, including King Kleombrotus. Spartan hegemony in the Peloponnese came to an end, as the Peloponnesians broke away, especially the Arcadians....Sparta was very much on the defensive, the Thebans duly invaded Lakedaemon and Epaminondas set up the Arcadian 'Mega-City'/Megalopolis, and gave the Messenians independence. Arguably, it was these two events which were 'decisive' ( rather than any battle or military action), and ended Sparta's domination of the Peloponnese forever......

And if proponents of the "halving of numbers theory" adduce textual evidence from Sphacteria to lack of the word "mora" after the above battle, not quite sure what you mean here....as we have seen it is likely that Xenophon's casual use of "3 of the 12 lochoi" rather than "one-and-a-half Morai of the six Morai" is probably simply the avoidance of clumsy language - the phrases "the Spartan Army", "the six Morai" and "the twelve Lochoi" were all used and are synonyms....
opponents employ the favourite recourse to source material that does not suit: argue corruption and emend the text to suit. When that doesn't quite carry the day some run the line that Xenophon is not the author of the "Lacedaemonian Constitution" and therefore this is to be discounted.
Nonetheless, anyone who has even briefly studied the sources knows that translations are sometimes faulty, surviving texts of one source differ, few are 'intact/complete', repeated copying produces errors/corruption - especially when it comes to numbers. It is not simply correlation of texts here, but rather the full weight of all the evidence that leads to the conclusions that the Spartan Army consisted of six Morai/twelve Lochoi and numbered roughly 8,000....
One needs to make a very strong case before altering a passage to suit.
...which I, and other scholars, have done by considering all the evidence holistically, not just textual.
I notice that you profer no evidence from the "halving" proponents of what became of the other half of the Spartan Army ?