The Sacred Band of Thebes

It's unfortunate that along the way same gender loving (homosexuality in men) became equivalent or synonymous with being weak and un-male like. Examples through out history prove otherwise.

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The Sacred Band of Thebes
By Louis Crompton



In classical Greece, not only Athens but cities with every kind of constitution took notice of the fact of male love. Aristocracies where the privileged few held sway recognized its power to forge bonds between promising youths and conservative mentors. Democracies saw it as insurance against tyranny. Tyrants sometimes forbade it or, more often, tasted its pleasures, suffered the revenge of rivals or alienated lovers, and lamented that their very omnipotence made it impossible ever to be sure they enjoyed disinterested affection. But the major source of its prestige remained (despite Plato) its contribution to military morale. In the fourth century this heroic tradition found its most famous embodiment in the so-called hieros lochos, the Sacred Band of Thebes. This force, created by the Theban general Gorgidas, was made up of pairs of lovers who at first fought interspersed throughout other regiments. Then, under his successor, Pelopidas, it fought as a separate contingent of shock troops. Its success was to make Thebes for a generation the most powerful state in Greece, and its fate was in the end the fate of Greece itself.

Theban tradition easily sanctioned such an institution. Thebes and Elis are repeatedly cited as the two states of the Greek mainland which most unqualifiedly encouraged male relations. Xenophon, in his Constitution of Sparta, observed that such relations were transitory at Elis but that at Thebes men and boys lived together “like married people”; perhaps this reflected Cretan patterns. The cult of Heracles was especially strong in Boeotia. Aristotle, in a lost work, described a “tomb of Iolaus” dedicated to the hero’s lover and companion-in-arms, where Theban lovers in his day still plighted mutual devotion. Plutarch thought the “Sacred” Band derived its name from this rite.

In 404 the Peloponnesian War had come to an end with Sparta’s total defeat of Athens. But the victors misused their power. Sparta wielded its new hegemony harshly, imposing oligarchic rulers favorable to their interests on states that formerly had democratic regimes. Among these was Thebes, where in 382 a Spartan commander treacherously seized its citadel and installed new pro-Spartan leaders. Three years later democratic Theban exiles returned and recaptured the fortress, the Cadmeia, in a daring coup that drove the Spartans out. Conflict with the most formidable military regime in Greece now seemed inevitable. At this crucial juncture Gorgidas, in 378, organized the Sacred Band, which realized—within a few years of the writing of the Symposium—Phaedrus’ fantasy of an “army of lovers.”

Plutarch was born (c. 46 ce) in the tiny village of Chaeronea some twenty miles west of Thebes and lived there all his life. Particularly interested in Boeotian traditions, he gives us, in his life of Pelopidas, the only substantial account we have of the Sacred Band. In tracing its origins, Plutarch shows himself unhappy with the legend that Oedipus’ father, Laius, had been the first to introduce pederasty to Thebes. Instead, he ascribes its institution to judicious civic authorities “who first made this form of love customary among the Thebans.” Finding Theban youth unruly, they sought to “relax and mollify their strong and impetuous natures in earliest boyhood.” To this harmonious end, Plutarch tells us, they trained them in the music of the flute and “gave love a conspicuous place in the life of the palaestra, thus tempering the dispositions of the young men.”

Apparently Gorgidas was killed in some skirmish shortly after he founded the band, for the next year its leadership passed to Pelopidas, the young Theban who had led the exiles in their rebellion. Under siege by the Spartans, the Thebans at first hesitated to challenge their redoubtable enemies in a formal battle. But having unexpectedly come upon a Spartan force while reconnoitering at Tegyrae, Pelopidas daringly attacked. Though the Spartans outnumbered them two or three to one, his spirited leadership won the day. Plutarch thought the occasion remarkable: “For in all their wars with the Greeks and Barbarians, as it would seem, never before had Lacedaemonians in superior numbers been overpowered by an inferior force, nor indeed in a pitched battle where the forces were evenly matched. Hence they were of an irresistible courage, and when they came to close quarters their reputation sufficed to terrify their opponents, who also, on their part, thought themselves no match for Spartans with an equal force.”

Plutarch called the undefeated Pelopidas “valiant, laborious, passionate, and magnanimous.” But his fame was eventually overshadowed by his friend Epaminondas, whose life in several points contrasted with his own. Pelopidas was rich but modest in his style of living; Epaminondas, despite his renown, remained poor until the day of his death. Pelopidas married and had children; Epaminondas died unwed. At the time the Cadmeia was seized, Epaminondas was looked upon as a scholarly recluse. A devoted disciple of the Pythagorean sage Lysis of Tarentum, who had settled in Thebes, he divided his time between exercises in the gymnasium, lectures, and philosophy. Though he declined to participate in the assassination of the Spartanizing Thebans, once the revolt began he joined Pelopidas in re-establishing democracy. Early in their careers he bravely risked his life to save his wounded friend. Though they competed for glory on the same narrow stage, they were never rivals—an unusual circumstance among jealous Greeks. Epaminondas now developed into an orator and statesman as well as a soldier. Indeed, it was he who, at a peace conference in 371, challenged Sparta’s overlordship of the Peloponnesus. In retaliation the Spartan king Agesilaus angrily excluded Thebes from the peace treaty. Thebes hastily prepared for full-scale war.

The battle that tried the issue between Sparta and Thebes was, according to Pausanias, “the most famous [victory] ever won by Greeks over Greeks.” At Leuctra in 371, Epaminondas devised a new maneuver. He strengthened his left wing and, holding his right wing back, attacked the Spartans obliquely, throwing them into confusion. Then Pelopidas led the Sacred Band to the charge and smashed the squadron commanded by the Spartan co-king, Cleombrotus, who was killed on the field. Epaminondas’ lover Asopichus also won fame in the battle. He put up so formidable a fight that his shield, decorated with a representation of the trophy that the Thebans had erected at Leuctra, hung as a conspicuous offering at Delphi.

Their defeat at Leuctra destroyed at a blow the military supremacy the Spartans had enjoyed for centuries. In the wake of his victory, Epaminondas invaded the Peloponnesus, freed the provinces of Messenia and Arcadia from the Spartan yoke, and carried the war into the suburbs of the city; this was the first siege the Spartans had suffered during the six hundred years that the Dorians had occupied the Peloponnesus. Thebes was now the leading power in Greece.

The victorious Epaminondas acted with a magnanimity that contrasted with Spartan tyranny. He reestablished Messene as Messenia’s provincial capital and built a new city, Megalopolis, as a center of defense for the long-subjugated Arcadians. Though the hegemony of Greece now fell to Thebes, he declined to subject other cities to Theban domination and pillage, as the Spartans and Athenians had done earlier when they wielded power. No doubt he had the intelligence to realize that the economic and military resources of Thebes would not have sustained this enterprise. As a result he won a unique fame as a liberator rather than an exploiter.

Classical and modern historians alike have joined to salute Epaminondas as Greece’s greatest warrior-statesman. Diodorus Siculus, who wrote in the age of Julius Caesar, thought he “excelled . . . all Greeks in valor and shrewdness in the art of war.”84 Diodorus ranked him above Solon, Themistocles, Miltiades, Cimon, Pericles, and Agesilaus in generalship and reputation. “For in each of the others you would discover but one particular superiority as a claim to fame; in him, however, all qualities combined. For in strength of body and eloquence of speech, furthermore in elevation of mind, contempt of lucre, fairness, and, most of all, in courage and shrewdness in the art of war, he far surpassed them all.” Diodorus was a Sicilian Greek and perhaps partial, but his Latin contemporary, Cornelius Nepos, a man of a markedly different tradition, was if anything even more eulogistic. In his Book of the Great Commanders Nepos expresses concern that his readers will look askance at Epaminondas’ reputation as a musician and dancer but begs them to remember the Greeks esteemed such frivolities. He praises without reservation Epaminondas’ intellectual and athletic prowess and finds he meets Roman standards of temperance, prudence, and seriousness: he was “practised in war, of great personal courage and high spirit” and “such a lover of truth that he never lied even in jest.” One part of his character was quite unclassical (if we except Caesar): “He was self-controlled, kindly and forbearing to a surprising degree.” Nepos acclaims him as one of the few successful Greek military leaders whose integrity was equal to his talent. His contemporary Cicero agreed. Discussing the influence of culture and philosophy on such leaders as Peisistratus, Pericles, Timotheus, and Agesilaus in his De Oratore, Cicero hailed Epaminondas as “perhaps the most outstanding figure in Greek history.”

Theban pre-eminence lasted only as long as Epaminondas lived. Pelopidas, leading a force north to free the people of Thessaly from the vicious Alexander of Pheras, was killed in 364 in a rash attempt to engage the tyrant in single combat. The Thessalians mourned and granted their would-be liberator heroic honors. Alexander was subsequently dispatched by his wife: one of her grievances was that the tyrant had made her younger brother his bedmate. In the meantime, the weakening of Sparta left the Peloponnesus in turmoil. Rival factions in Arcadia summoned Thebes and Sparta to their aid, and Epaminondas once more found himself face to face with his old foes at Mantinea in 362. His brilliant strategy again routed the Spartans but at a fatal cost. Diodorus records the story of his death. Pierced by a spear, he was told he would die when the point was withdrawn from his chest. After conversing with his friends, he said, “It is time to die,” and ordered them to withdraw the spear.

Another lover of Epaminondas, Caphisodorus, also died at Mantinea; Plutarch tells us they were buried together on the battlefield. Pausanias, visiting Thebes in the second century after Christ, found these verses inscribed on a statue raised in Epaminondas’ honor:

"By my counsel was Sparta shorn of her glory,
And holy Messene received at last her children:
By the arms of Thebes was Megalopolis encircled with walls,
And all Greece won independence and freedom."

A few years before Pausanias’ visit, the Emperor Hadrian had inscribed his own tribute on another monument to the Theban which stood on the site of his death.

The Theban Sacred Band met its nemesis in Philip of Macedonia. In 367 when Philip was about fifteen, he had been sent as a hostage to Thebes and remained there for three years while Thebes was at the height of its prestige. Philip must have been stirred by the victories of Epaminondas and Pelopidas and fascinated by their new fighting methods, since we later find him revolutionizing military practice by adapting them to his own purposes. Dio Chrysostom credits Philip’s later diplomatic sagacity to the education he received from Epaminondas and makes him the eromenos of Pelopidas. Perhaps he was, or perhaps this is an honorific assumption in accordance with the Hellenic motto, “Cherchez l’amant,” for Plutarch says Philip lived not with Pelopidas but in the house of Pammenes, the general who was to assume leadership after the death of Epaminondas. As a military leader, Pammenes was an enthusiastic advocate of the discipline that formed the Sacred Band. Plutarch quotes (several times) Pammenes’ criticism of Homer’s Nestor for organizing regiments on tribal lines. “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 to protect each other.”

On his return to Macedon, Philip put to use what he had learned at Thebes. When he came to the throne, he organized a strong professional army and, having secured his position in the north, managed by a series of adroit diplomatic maneuvers to extend his power into southern Greece with the intention of unifying the entire country under his command. When Thebes and Athens belatedly formed an alliance to oppose him, the crucial battle took place in 338 at Plutarch’s Chaeronea. The Sacred Band, still intact and undefeated, remained the prime troops of the Greek army, but this was their Götterdämmerung. True to their traditions, they stood their ground and were killed to the last man, so that the bodies of the three hundred lay strewn on the field. In the triumph of victory Philip came upon the remains of the regiment he had known in Thebes as an adolescent thirty years before. Plutarch describes his response: “And when, 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.’”

When the geographer Pausanias visited the site four hundred years later, he saw their memorial. In the empty fields, overlooking the common grave of the Thebans, before a row of cypress, stood a gigantic marble lion. It stands there still. Its present restoration was undertaken in 1902 by an organization called the Order of Chaeronea. (This was in fact a secret, quasi-Masonic society of English homosexuals, founded and led by the reformer George Cecil Ives.) Modern excavations of the battleground have recovered the remains of 254 men, almost the whole complement of the Sacred Band, laid out in seven rows.

Louis Crompton
Homosexuality and Civilization