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Murray Dahm bucks the general organization of Osprey’s Campaign series with this book on the Battle of Leuctra.

Notably, main section does not give one big description of the course of the battle; instead we get a fairly brief version of it, and the rest of the time is spent examining sources. The upshot here is that Dahm does not trust Xenophon, and is looking to other sources on the battle to give a general picture, which Xenophon can add to. This is seemingly the opposite of most reconstructions which start with Xenophon, and use everyone else to add detail.

Dahm paints Xenophon as a pro-Spartan Athenian, and more importantly, anti-Theban. I’m not really up on him, but that does sound right from what little I know. The other sources give Leuctra as a surprising, but hard fought victory for Thebes under Epiminondas, and as a result of a deliberate plan. Xenophon on the other hand doesn’t even mention Epiminondas, or any other Theban commander, and paints it as a battle Sparta lost, rather than one their opponents won.

Outside of the long-form argument that takes over the main section of the book, we get two very valuable discussions. The first is at the start of the book, and gives a good physical overview of Boeotia, Thebes’ position as the dominant city of the region, her role during the Persian Wars, the Peloponnesian Wars, and the Corinthian War. That role generally being second string to whoever could get into the region, starting with, infamously to other Greeks, the Persians.

This is followed by a six-page account of the Battle of Tegyra, which also gets one of the isometric maps showing the area of the fighting, and a two-page spread color plate. This is something of a practice run for Leuctra, where a Theban force defeated a larger Spartan force after killing its two commanders. This led to the resurgence of Thebes, a new Boeotian League, and four years later the Battle Leuctra seems to follow the same pattern. (And it is worth mentioning that Xenophon does not mention the battle at all.)

Past this, we have the usual Osprey Campaign sections talking about the armies and their commanders. Three good color maps of the region (one each for the routes taken to Leuctra and Tegyra, and one showing prominent Boeotian battle sites in general), lots of color photographs of the ground the battle took place on (generally from Getty Images this time), and photos of various contemporary artifacts.

If I had read other books talking about the battle, the detailed discussion of sources and the reconstruction here would be very handy, and I recommend this to anyone who has read such. Without that background, much of the main section moves towards the tendentious, especially for the usual Osprey audience. That said, there’s still enough value here, and the battle interesting enough that I still recommend it for the more general ancient military history enthusiast.