, who was raised in Boeotia as a hostage

Hostage

A hostage is a person or entity which is held by a captor. The original definition meant that this was handed over by one of two belligerent parties to the other or seized as security for the carrying out of an agreement, or as a preventive measure against certain acts of war...

 and was a student of the Peloponnesian War, would go on to develop further the tactical ideas originated by Pagondas. In turn, his legacy would be followed and expanded by his son, Alexander.

Historian Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson is an American military historian, columnist, political essayist and former classics professor, notable as a scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a commentator on modern warfare and contemporary politics for National Review and other media outlets...

, among others, therefore argues that Pagondas's simple use of cavalry reserves and altered troop formations set the stage for the entire military history of the West

Western world

The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...

, and, by extension, the world.

See also

• Socrates
  Socrates
  Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...
  
  
• Alcibiades
  Alcibiades
  Alcibiades, son of Clinias, from the deme of Scambonidae , was a prominent Athenian statesman, orator, and general. He was the last famous member of his mother's aristocratic family, the Alcmaeonidae, which fell from prominence after the Peloponnesian War...
  
  
• Military tactic
• Military strategy
  Military strategy
  Military strategy is a set of ideas implemented by military organizations to pursue desired strategic goals. Derived from the Greek strategos, strategy when it appeared in use during the 18th century, was seen in its narrow sense as the "art of the general", 'the art of arrangement' of troops...
  
  
• Ancient Greece
  Ancient Greece
  Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
  
  
• Battle of Leuctra
  Battle of Leuctra
  The Battle of Leuctra was a battle fought on July 6, 371 BC, between the Boeotians led by Thebans and the Spartans along with their allies amidst the post-Corinthian War conflict. The battle took place in the neighbourhood of Leuctra, a village in Boeotia in the territory of Thespiae...
  
  

Further reading

• Hanson, Victor Davis Ripples of Battle: How Wars of the Past Still Determine How we Fight, How we Live, and How we Think (Doubleday, 2003)
• Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War
• Kagan, Donald The Pelopennesian War (Viking Press, 2003)