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As the saying goes – all’s fair in love and war. But what of mixing the two together? One might arrive at the most infamous group of warrior-lovers – and queer men at arms – in history: the Sacred Band of Thebes.
Greek historians, and now modern archaeologists, have detailed layer after layer of this legendary unit’s history: their rise, their famous ethos and devotion to one another, and their valiant end at the hands of Alexander the Great himself. But what does the Sacred Band tell us about queer lives in the late Hellenic period, and how does their story illuminate the wider pantheon of queer history?
Getting the Band Together
The Sacred Band of Thebes exists in a complex space – the vast area between the historical record, literary tradition and cultural legends. Indeed, there has long been (and remains) speculation over the historical reality of this fascinating “band of brothers” at all, let alone their exact contribution to the pivotal events of the late Hellenic period.[1]
The collective record including both historical writings and more recent evidence implies a robust case for a real “Sacred Band” of soldiers – but who they were must be understood within the cultural context of their time. The Hellenic period, or the Classical Greek era, roughly spans 507 BCE to 323 BCE (the latter year marking the death of Alexander the Great and the rise of the succeeding Hellenistic age)[2]. This period was defined by the growth, widening influence, and then rivalries of the now famous Greek city states (Athens, Sparta, and Thebes among them). The cities, though theoretically united by a shared classical identity, nevertheless diverged in governing styles, societal norms and values.
This was particularly true of sexuality and the relationships between (and among) genders. R.B. Parkinson writes, “[i]ntimacy between men was culturally approved in some city states in ancient Greece.”[3] These relationships were not necessarily spontaneous, romanticized affairs but were usually structured around the imperative to maintain an elite, highly educated and male-dominated society.
In my recent posts on Queer Japan, I discussed how the samurai of the pre-Meiji era fostered homosexual affairs amongst themselves for a similar purpose: to train and equip the warriors of the future, and build lasting alliances. The Greek system of male-male love was similar: typically (though not exclusively) younger men of the elite classes in their late teens would be attached to older, more experienced men of their same elevated social class.[4] While these relationships were romantic in nature, they were also intended to develop and confirm the values of Greek masculinity in the next generation of male leaders.
James Flynn writes, “[b]esides physical intimacy, the man would mentor the youth in philosophy, politics, and poetry,” all crucial skills a capable Greek official would need to excel in before marrying and fathering their own families.[5] These relationships were not necessarily the norm everywhere in the classical period, however, and their utility (and prevalence) varied throughout the Greek islands.
Likewise, this highly structured, short-term model was not necessarily the only such model in evidence in ancient Greece. Indeed, there are numerous examples (real and mythological) of men in love for long-term, fully partnered relationships recorded from this period: the legend of Heracles, detailed further below, is among them, as is that of Achilles and Patroclus from the Trojan War narrative. Another more famous example is that of Alexander the Great himself (the perhaps unwitting, ironic vanquisher of the Sacred Band of Thebes) and his rumored lover, Hephaestion. Not surprisingly, the evidence surrounding the Sacred Band themselves lends credence to the more organic, romantic notion of what we would today consider queer love among men.
While homosexual relationships (of likely varying forms) were certainly known in Athens and Sparta, in Thebes they were “actively encouraged.”[6] Classical sources note that in Thebes, homosexual relationships were conducted openly – perhaps moreso than anywhere else in Greece. In Thebes, men were known to live together in shared homesteads as would husbands and wives elsewhere.[7] Plato’s writings suggest that this unusual aspect of Theban culture fit well within that of the wider Boeotian region, of which Thebes was a principal city. His Symposium contends that among Boeotian peoples, the shared view regards it “right to gratify (male) lovers, and no one, young or old, would say that it is wrong.”[8] It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that some historians argue for the existence of multiple “sacred bands” of warrior-lovers in ancient Greece – not just the most famous one known from Thebes.[9]
City on the Rise
The Sacred Band of Thebes was an established military unit for about forty years from 378 – 338 BCE.[10] Its exact membership likely changed over time as warriors aged in and out of its ranks, but it was believed to always consist of 150 pairs of male lovers – 300 soldiers in total.
Its odd title might have been inspired by homoerotic Greek mythology: Thebans supposedly held the hero Heracles in great reverence and may have worshipped at the presumed tomb of Heracles’ lover Iolaus.[11] The example of these mythological boyfriends, both men-at-arms themselves, may have been the religious inspiration for the designation of a “sacred band” of male warrior-lovers.
But the impetus for their formation came from the very real, and dangerous, threat of Spartan domination of Thebes in the 4th century BCE. The band was formed around 378 by a Theban commander named Gorgidas, intent on driving the invading Spartans out of Thebes in preparation for a wider Greek war.[12] The initial 300 men who formed the Sacred Band were all regular soldiers, whose lovers were known and scattered throughout various units. Eventually, these soldiers and their partners would be permanently paired together in a singular fighting force.
Gorgidas apparently perished soon after, handing over command of the newly formed “Sacred Band” to another rebel leader, Pelopidas. The latter figure is the subject of Plutarch’s “The Life of Pelopidas” which provides the most comprehensive ancient source on the Sacred Band. Plutarch describes Pelopidas in glowing terms as a capable, incisive and intelligent leader, as well as the mastermind behind the success which his Sacred Band ultimately attained.[13] Notably, while Plutarch’s account is the most thorough such account of the Sacred Band, it is not the only such account available. Other accounts likewise allude to the romantic nature of the Band’s design (though not all such accounts do so), supporting the historical case that a “Sacred Band” of some form did indeed exist.
Friends and Lovers
Plutarch’s account of the Sacred Band highlights the logic behind the warrior-lovers in plain fashion. Intriguingly, his report suggests that the devotions in evidence among the Sacred Band were fully romantic, long-term and committed partnerships – distinct from the short-term, primarily utilitarian model in evidence in other parts of Greece. He writes:
“[S]ome say that this band was composed of lovers and beloved…For tribesmen and clansmen make little account of tribesmen and clansmen in times of danger; whereas, a band that is held together by the friendship between lovers is indissoluble and not to be broken, since the lovers are ashamed to play the coward before their beloved, and the beloved before their lovers, and both stand firm in danger to protect each other.”[14]
He elaborates that Pelopidas was particularly impressed by the power of romantic devotion as a militaristic motivator: “[A]fter their valour had shone out at Tegyra, where they fought by themselves and about his own person, never afterwards divided or scattered them, but, treating them as a unit, put them into the forefront of the greatest conflicts.”[15]
This source again recalls the samurai model noted earlier, which viewed homosexual love among men as a pathway for forming and maintaining alliances in a dangerous world. In the case of the Sacred Band, the intimate and emotional bonds forged among lovers were viewed as something of a stealth weapon – a glue ensuring unit cohesion and shared courage even in the fog of war. In the violent and volatile world of late Hellenic Greece, such cohesion was surely hard to come by – making Pelopidas’s unit of apparently queer lovers all the more dangerous to anyone unfortunate enough to cross their path.
Battle Scars
As the “Boeotian League” was formed to push Sparta out of the region once and for all, the newly minted Sacred Band of Thebes became “the first professional standing army funded by the state in Greek history.”[16]
The Battle of Tegyra in 375 BCE may have been the first comprehensive test of the Sacred Band in action, and (as noted above) was the point at which the 300-man unit was permanently confirmed and never separated in action again.[17] This unexpected battle occurred as the Thebans attempted to overtake the city of Orchomenus but accidentally fell upon the Spartan army. The Sacred Band proved capable of breaking the Spartan lines, leading to an embarrassing and costly defeat for the now-retreating Spartans.
To be sure, the Sacred Band was kept busy as about a decade of fighting followed until they faced the Spartans in a final, decisive battle. The Battle of Leuctra in 371 BCE saw the Sacred Band lead their compatriots to victory against a numerically superior Spartan force. The Sacred Band, under Pelopidas, led a key attack on a squadron commanded by the Spartan co-ruler, Cleombrotus, who perished in the rout that quickly followed.[18]
This crucial action resulted in a near total victory for the Theban forces, the decimation of Spartan rule in the peninsula, and a sea change in Greek leadership. For the next few decades, the warrior-lovers seemed to be an invincible force at the militaristic front of a new age of Greek leadership. But, as so often is the case in history, the tide would turn on the Sacred Band with a new threat on the horizon.
King(s) of Macedon
By the 340s BCE, the greatest challenge to the Theban-led Hellenic world came not from Persia or other nearby Greeks, as had always been the case in the past – but from the north and the growing power of Macedon.
Philip II, and his soon-to-be-notorious son, Alexander, had big ambitions. In one of history’s many ironies, Philip II had once lived in Thebes as a royal teenage hostage after Thebes invaded an unstable Macedon during his youth.[19] While Philip’s experiences during this period are hotly debated, ancient sources suggest that Philip proved an incisive student of Greek warfare – his supposed instructors being none other than Epaminondas and Pelopidas, the renowned leader of the Sacred Band.[20] Some sources even suggest that Philip II was himself romantically involved with members of the Sacred Band during his time in Thebes.[21]
Regardless of amorous engagements, Philip seems to have learned a great deal about Greek weaponry, infantry and cavalry tactics in Thebes and elsewhere – skills he brought to bear when he finally ascended to the throne of Macedon in 359 BCE. One source argues, “[Philip] took the concept of the phalanx and improved upon it by replacing the spear with the sarissa, a longer pike with greater reach, and also reequipped his soldiers with better swords, armor, and helmets. The Macedonian army was, essentially, the Sacred Band on a much larger scale.”[22]
Chaeronea
Philip kicked off his campaign to conquer all the Mediterranean world almost immediately, aided by glaring weaknesses in the alliances which had propped up Theban leadership after the Battle of Leuctra decades earlier. By 338 BCE, the Thebans had had enough of King Philip’s adventures and, in alliance with their Athenian cousins, united to face down the Macedonians in one of the most important and decisive military engagements prior to those of Alexander the Great.
The Battle of Chaeronea remains a controversial engagement in terms of its key participants, who made which crucial decisions and when, and the exact numbers of forces (infantry and cavalry) arrayed against each other on both sides. Ancient and modern sources largely agree that the Sacred Band indeed participated on the Theban side and fought with tremendous courage, but were ultimately unable to overcome the advantages of Philips’ superior tactics and improved weaponry.
The accounts of Plutarch and others suggest the Sacred Band were the last of the Greeks to fall, having fought valiantly throughout the infantry battle until the prince Alexander himself led a crucial cavalry charge against them. This reportedly broke the Sacred Band at last, wrecking their previously impenetrable formation and leaving them utterly vulnerable.[23] With death closing in on all of them, the Sacred Band lived true to their founders’ visions: each of the 300 lovers fell, one after the other, alongside their beloved partners and friends.
It was thus a poignant and unforgettable scene when a victorious King Philip surveyed his conquest after the battle:
“Philip was surveying the dead, and stopped at the place where the three hundred were lying, all where they had faced the long spears of his phalanx, with their armour, and mingled one with another, he was amazed, and on learning that this was the band of lovers and beloved, burst into tears and said: ‘Perish miserably they who think that these men did or suffered aught disgraceful.’”[24]
Legacies of Love
Philip himself would not be long for the world, either; he was murdered at the hands of an aggrieved servant in 336 BCE, allowing his son the chance he’d been aching for to literally take on the world. But while Alexander rode off toward Persia, Central Asia and India, the annihilated Sacred Band was not to be forgotten by history – or archaeology.
In 1880, an excavation near the site of the Battle of Chaeronea produced a startling find: the skeletons of 254 men, laid out in seven rows as part of a mass burial from the classical period. The skeletons – maimed and broken – indicated death in a tremendous and violent fight during ancient times.[25] Though impossible to fully confirm, these remains are thought to be those of the long-lost Sacred Band – incredibly, still lying together over two millennia since their final stand against Philip and Alexander.[26] James Flynn notes that “some of the pairs of corpses had arms linked together at the elbow. The soldiers had died as they had lived: as devoted lovers, loyal to the end.”[27]
Appropriately, the burial site of the Sacred Band is today marked by the Lion of Chaeronea: a proud statue which stands before the enclosed gravesite, erected at the fabled location after its 19th century rediscovery.[28] The Lion is perhaps the worthiest icon to guard them: a symbol of unflinching courage to match those whose courage was driven by love.
What, though, does this remarkable narrative tell us about the wider breadth of queer history? Many conclusions are possible, as are many lingering questions. What seems clear, based on the evidence available, is that even if the Sacred Band (or some details presented in ancient sources) was not a conclusive fact of history, the ancient Greeks certainly gave credence to their romantic mythology. In their culture, and the wider cultures they influenced, love among men was not just tacitly accepted or acknowledged; it was eulogized and celebrated. The warrior-lovers of the Sacred Band were a model of devotion and duty in a world which demanded both as a matter of survival.
But this brand of queer love was not simply a collective matter; it was also an intimately personal one. The interlaced arms of skeletons, found 2000 years after their demise, are the final testament to each couple’s fundamental humanity. Each man who stood, ready to perish alongside the one they loved, brought their own story to Chaeronea. Although the stories came to a tragic and violent end, legends sprang forth from their graves.
The Sacred Band may have been named for a heroic fable, but it was the heroism of these warrior-lovers that immortalized them across millennia. The Lion of Chaeronea thus guards hallowed ground; indeed, what could be more sacred than the final resting place of those who fought for one another until the very end?
[1] I would argue, however, that this speculation (in light of the records and evidence to be further detailed below) is no longer necessary and the Sacred Band belongs firmly in the realm of history.
[2] Joshua J. Mark, “Hellenic World,” World History Encyclopedia, September 2, 2009, https://www.worldhistory.org/Hellenic_World/.
[3] R.B. Parkinson, “Greek Men Together,” in A Little Gay History: Desire and Diversity Across the World, Columbia University Press, New York, 2013, pg. 47.
[4] Ibid.
[5] James Flynn, “Lovers and Soldiers,” National Endowment for the Humanities, June 22, 2021, https://www.neh.gov/article/lovers-and-soldiers.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Louis Crompton, “Classical Greece” in Homosexuality and Civilization (Harvard University Press, 2003), pg. 69.
[8] Plato, The Symposium, tr. C. Gill (London: Penguin Books, 1999).
[9] Joshua J. Mark, “Sacred Band of Thebes,” World History Encyclopedia, June 17, 2021, https://www.worldhistory.org/Sacred_Band_of_Thebes/.
[10] Mark, ibid.
[11] Compton, ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Plutarch, “The Life of Pelopidas,” In The Parallel Lives, accessed August 18, 2024, https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/e/roman/texts/plutarch/lives/pelopidas*.html.
[14] Ibid, pg. 387.
[15] Ibid. pg. 389.
[16] Flynn, ibid.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Crompton, pg. 71.
[19] N.G.L Hammond, “What May Philip Have Learnt as a Hostage in Thebes?” Clare College, June 1999, https://grbs.library.duke.edu/article/download/2541/5897&ved=2ahUKEwikw7CcyY6IAxXgF1kFHTw3GaYQFnoECCQQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0I8TR1paiR1iEszp-Y3xTq
[20] Ibid.
[21] Flynn, ibid.
[22] Mark, ibid.
[23] Paul A. Rahe “The Annihilation of the Sacred Band at Chaeronea.” American Journal of Archaeology 85, no. 1, January 1981, 84–87. https://doi.org/10.2307/504975.
[24] Plutarch, 18:5.
[25] Flynn, ibid.
[26] Mark, ibid.
[27] Flynn, ibid.
[28] Tobias J. Fulton, “The Sacred Band of Thebes,” Hellenic Museum, May 25, 2022, https://www.hellenic.org.au/post/the-sacred-band-of-thebes#viewer-fmpug.