Epaminondas

Epaminondas led 4th-century BC Thebes out from under Spartan subjugation and turned it into the dominant Greek power through military innovation—he developed the oblique order and other tactics that shattered Spartan invincibility at Leuctra in 371 BC. He liberated the Messenian helots, a people enslaved since their defeat around 600 BC, and redrew the political map of Greece by breaking old alliances and overseeing the construction of new cities. His contemporary Xenophon admired him in the Hellenica, and Cicero later called him "the first man of Greece." The Theban hegemony he built lasted r…