Battle of Cynoscephalae (364 BC) 364 BC
Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
Key facts
| Year | 364 BC | Wikidata P585 (point in time) |
|---|---|---|
| Era | Ancient (before 500) | derived from year |
| Location | Greece | Natural Earth (modern borders) |
| Continent | Europe | Natural Earth |
| War / conflict | Boeotian War | Wikidata P361 |
| Coordinates | 39.3600, 22.8300 | Wikidata P625 |
About the battle
The Battle of Cynoscephalae was a military engagement in 364 BC between the forces of Thebes and its Thessalian allies, led by Pelopidas, against the army of Alexander of Pherae. Pelopidas's army defeated Alexander's much larger force, ending Alexander's attempts to secure hegemony in Thessaly, though Pelopidas himself was killed.
Alexander had extended the dominance of Pherae over the other cities of Thessaly since his assumption of power in 369 BC, leading the Thessalians to request military support from Thebes, then the dominant military power in Greece. After inconclusive interventions in 369 and 368, the Thebans voted to send a force of 7,000 under Pelopidas in 364, but the army was disbanded following a solar eclipse on 13 July, considered a bad omen. Pelopidas set out for Thessaly with a small force of volunteer cavalry, and recruited further untrained troops from the Thessalians. The final compositions of the opposing forces are unclear: Alexander is believed to have outnumbered Pelopidas by a factor of around two to one, and to have commanded around 17,000–20,000 troops.
The armies met at Cynoscephalae, a hilly region to the west of Pherae. In the initial phases of the battle, both attempted to use light infantry to seize the high ground between them: Alexander's forces…
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Battle of Cynoscephalae (364 BC) (revision 1370438027), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; shortened by selecting paragraphs and trimming at a sentence boundary; formatting and citations removed. No text added.
Nearby battles
- Battle of Velestino 1897 · 8 km
- Battle of Demetrias · 10 km
- Battle of Halmyros 1311 · 22 km
- Battle of Cynoscephalae 197 BC · 23 km
- Battle of Pharsalus 48 BC · 39 km
- Battle of Crannon 322 BC · 45 km
Other battles of the Boeotian War
- Battle of Naxos 376 BC
- Battle of Tegyra 375 BC
- Battle of Leuctra 371 BC
All 4 battles of the Boeotian War →
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