The Ancients - The Sacred Band of Thebes

Episode Date: July 29, 2021

The Theban Sacred Band was one of the greatest military corps of Ancient Greece, thriving from the city-state of Thebes for almost 50 years in the mid 4th century BC. In addition to their fighting prowess, however, there is another fascinating aspect to their history; this 300-man elite corps was made up of 150 pairs of male lovers, many of them buried side by side where they fell in battle. To hear more about this, Tristan spoke to James Romm, author, reviewer, and James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics at Bard College in Annandale, New York. James gives us a glimpse of Theban democracy, power struggles between leading city-states, and the growth of eros, sexual love, in Greek public life. His book ‘The Sacred Band’ is out now.

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If you do get the chance, go and check that out in due course. But today's podcast, we are chatting with James about one of his more recent projects, if not his most recent project. This is all about the Theban Sacred Band, an elite Greek military unit that thrived in the mid-4th century BC from the city-state of Thebes. Now what's so extraordinary about the sacred band was that it consisted of 150 pairs of homosexual lovers. For almost 50 years it was the elite military fighting force in mainland Greece until a figure called King Philip II of Macedon came along and defeated them at the Battle of Chaeronea, fought around this time of year in 338 BC.

So without further ado, to reveal all about the Theban sacred band, here's James. James, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Now, the Theban Sacred Band is shining a light on a remarkable, unique ancient Greek military unit. I mean, it's not Spartan, it's not Athenian, but it played a central role in the rise of a city-state that can we say history hasn't been kind to that's right and one historian in particular who wrote the only surviving account of the era of the rise of thebes xenophon was especially unkind to the thebans he hated them and he left out some of their most important achievements, including the exploits of the sacred band. Well, you mentioned Xenophon. We'll get into Xenophon

very soon, I've got no doubt. But just to set the scene, the background, the early 4th century BC, when this is all happening. I mean, James, particularly between like 400 and 380 BC, there is significant animosity, there's hostility, particularly between Thebes and the other ancient city-state that is Sparta. Yes, Thebes and Sparta had been allies for the 5th century. And in the Peloponnesian War, Thebes fought on the side of the Spartans, was really one of their principal allies. principal allies. And it was only around 400, around the turn of the century, that Thebes began leaning away from Sparta and gravitating towards Athens. And of course, that outraged the Spartans. And one Spartan in particular, King Agesilaus, who was one of the principal figures of this period, detested the Thebans for betrayal. And it was he who

masterminded the occupation of Thebes, Spartan occupation that started in 382, which is really the starting point of my story. Exactly. So 382 BC, this Spartan occupation. James, tell us through this incredible story. So Spartans had decided to march north through Boeotia to attack a city called Olynthus. They saw Olynthus as a threat to the treaty, which all the Greeks had signed, and they were determined to punish the violation of the treaty. And they demanded that thieves participate in the expedition, but Thebes had declined. So on their way through, the Spartans were camping outside of Thebes and seemingly just staying one night and then marching on.

But the next day, they doubled back, rushed through the gates of the city, which had been opened for them by collaborators inside, and up to the Cadmea, which is been opened for them by collaborators inside, and up to the Cadmea, which is a fortified acropolis, almost impregnable, and installed themselves there and instantly became the controlling power in the city. They replaced the regime, which was largely pro-Athenian, with a pro-Spartan puppet regime and dominated the politics of the city for the next three years. For the next three years, but James, it sounds like this is only the start of this story because certain Thebans in particular, how do they react to this Spartan occupation?

Well, as you might expect, those who were on the Athenian side, on the democratic side, instantly went into exile or became political dissidents. And many of the dissidents were jailed or executed. But the exiles took up residence in Athens. And from there, they plotted a counter-stroke. It took three years to launch it. But in 379, an expedition was mounted to retake the city, daring exploit led by a man named Palapidas, who becomes one of the principal figures in the rise of Thebes. A covert operation, as we might call it, with only 12 exiles stealing back into the city, putting on women's clothing because they knew that the members of the puppet regime were about to celebrate a festival that involved casual sex. And they presented themselves as sexual partners and then took off their women's clothes, drew out their daggers and assassinated the leaders of the puppet

regime. And that was the start of the counter-revolution that ended up retaking the city and booting the Spartans out. Wow. That's quite something. James, it sounds like, as you said, this counter-revolution, it does succeed. And you mentioned that name Pelopidas there. I mean, once the Spartans are there, they've been evicted from Thebes. The Thebans, they don't rest on their laurels. They now realize that there's probably going to be a counter-attack or something. So what do they decide to do? So they knew that Agesilaus would never stand for

this kind of insult or blow to his imperium. So they put together a new military force, the Sacred Band, recruiting it from pairs of male lovers. Thebes had a long tradition of supporting male couples, and male couples in their city seemed to have been uniquely monogamous, and their relationships were conceived of as a kind of marriage. So it was a long-term partnership, not the kind of flings that one sees in Athens or elsewhere. So these couples were stable, long-term partners committed to one another. And Thebes relied on their love for each other as a motivator in battle, that they would want to excel in one another's eyes, protect one another. And that would be the best fighting force that the Greeks could mount.

James, what you just said there, is that the reasoning that our ancient sources therefore put forward for why, for this elite unit, they decide to have 150 pairs of male lovers? Yes. The number 300 throughout Greek history seems to have had a kind of magical importance. We hear about the 300 at Thermopylae, of which Zack Snyder made a famous movie. And there were other 300 elite units. So this was a number that the Greeks associated with a particular kind of cohesion and power. But no one had ever used Eros, the force of sexual love, as part of that cohesion. And that seems to have been a uniquely successful

innovation on the Theban's part. Well, it's very, very interesting. And just before we start looking at the actions of the sacred bands during the fourth century, you did mention right at the start Xenophon as one of our sources. Because, James, who are our main sources when we're looking at the subject of the Theban's sacred band? So the main source for the band itself is Plutarch, who lived about 500 years after these events. But he was a Boeotian, so these were his own people, and he had a unique interest in Boeotian history. He wrote biographies of Epaminondas and Pelopidas in his parallel lives. Epaminondas seems to have been the very first of the parallel lives and therefore was lost

because works at the beginning tend to get torn away and lost in the course of transmission. But Pelopidas survives the life of Pelopidas, and it has two chapters discussing the sacred band, going into some depth about how they were composed and how they were formed. And in complete contrast, you said that Xenophon, he doesn't have much regard for Thebes in the fourth century, to put it mildly. I mean, does he mention the sacred band at all? No, he mentions at one point the chosen men of Thebes as an elite military corps. That seems to be as far as he was willing to go. He expunges their exploits and he doesn't name them, but he is aware of their existence because he talks of the chosen men, an elite unit. Fair enough. As you have said in your book of history not being written by the winners in that

case i mean james moving then on to like the action of the sacred band so forming in around 379 bc and it's not long before this unit is in action yes so their first successful exploit seems to have been the battle of tegera in 375, where they faced, quite by surprise, a Spartan unit that was twice their size. And quite by surprise, they had no choice but to stand and fight and were victorious. They ended up killing the Palomarcs, the two leaders of the Spartan Corps, in their first attack. and the rest of the Spartans took flight, made their way back to a nearby city for safe refuge, and didn't stand and face them. And according to Diodorus, another historian whose work is preserved, this astonished all of Greece.

Xenophon completely omits it because he doesn't like to see the Spartans embarrassed. He was a great Spartophile, and he passes in silence over some of the places where the Spartans got a whooping. But Diodorus makes clear that this was an astonishing moment in Greek history. And why is it such an astonishing moment? What really is the impact of the sacred band's success at Tegira? Well, the Spartans had cultivated what's been called the Spartan Mirage, the illusion of invincibility. And that was really their principal force multiplier. They had very few soldiers by this time. Their population had fallen off greatly, but they still had their reputation as invincible warriors. And so when they took the field,

a lot of their opponents weren't willing to stand and face them. Some of them would turn and run at first contact with the Spartan phalanx or not even make contact. So their reputation was their principal weapon. And this defeat at Tedra took away a lot of that reputation. And then four years later came the Battle of Leuctra, an even bigger, more cataclysmic defeat, which demolished what was left of the Spartan mirage. Well, it sounds like that's the place that we'll go to next, James. I mean, you mentioned that it's

four years later at Leuctra. I mean, just set the background to this clash, first of all, how do the armies of Thebes and the army of the Spartans and their allies, how did they come to face each other on this plain at Lutra? So there had been a long dispute in Greek diplomatic parlays about the legitimacy of what's called the Boeotian League. Thebes had formed a coalition of fellow Boeotian cities, a regional alliance which it led and which was source of much of its power. But other cities, especially Sparta, denied that such a league could exist because it went against the principle of autonomy for all, which was a sort of sacred principle in Greek diplomacy at this time. So a new treaty conference was held at Sparta in 371, and the Spartans insisted that the Thebans could not represent a league, that each city had to stand on its own, and the Thebans

insisted that they could. And when Pamanandas, who was the leader of the diplomatic mission, stood up and said, well, if we're going to disband our league, then you Spartans have to disband your league too. Agesilaus became furious, struck them out of the treaty, and declared war. And only a few weeks later, an army invaded, Spartan-led army, and took opposition at the plain of Leuctra, about 10 miles from Thebes. And so that was how the battle shaped up. What caused the anarchy? How did medieval migrants shape the language I'm speaking right now? Who won the Hundred Years' War? Could England's lost patron saint be buried under a tennis court in Suffolk? How did England's last medieval king end up under a car park?

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But how do the Theban leaders, you see that the army of the Spartans is there, how do they prepare? How do they deploy? I mean, where is the sacred band in all of this? So Epaminondas was in charge of the coalition army, the Boeotian army, and he did a very remarkable thing for the time. Instead of putting his strongest force on his right wing, which was what Greek infantry armies always did, he put it on the left wing, knowing that that wing would face the Spartans, which were the strongest of their side and therefore on their right. So instead of strength facing weakness, as was usually the case, he decided to face strength with strength.

And I think his confidence in the Sacred Band was largely behind that decision. So he put the Sacred Band on the far left and built his phalanx 50 shields deep, which was three times the normal depth. So it was thicker, stronger, and had the sacred band as its spearhead facing the Spartans. And when the attack was launched, the Spartans became disarrayed for complicated reasons that are unclear from the surviving descriptions. But the Spartans were in some disarrayed for complicated reasons that are unclear from the surviving descriptions. But the Spartans were in some disarray and seeing that the Sacred Band charged straight at them on the run and instantly smashed their way right into the heart of the line, fatally wounded the Spartan king who was leading the battle. So it was a knockout blow, almost right at the start.

His right wing never engaged with the Spartan left because those were not Spartans. They were the allies of Sparta who were there against their will. And Epaminondas understood that, that the Spartans were compelling other cities to fight Thebes. And he decided we won't even fight those people at all. We'll just concentrate all our force on the Spartans. James, it sounds, as you say, it sounds completely unprecedented for that time in ancient history, not just the fact that this army was charging the Spartans themselves, but also that they managed to get this decisive blow. And it must be hugely significant, perhaps even of the denting of

the Spartan image at Lutra. Yes, it was a seismic event. The news of it spread across Greece and brought astonishment to the rest of the Greek cities. When war was declared, Xenophon tells us, everyone else expected that the Thebans would be demolished. This was going to be the end of Thebes, but instead it was the end of the Spartan Mirage, from which they never recovered. And what does this event, what does it really emphasise about the Theban sacred band and its quality on the battlefield? Well, it shows that they were uniquely effective in their mobility, They were uniquely effective in their mobility, and the small size of the unit meant that they could be targeted at a very precise point. It's much what Alexander would later perfect, Alexander the Great, in his battles.

As some of your listeners know, Alexander triumphed over the Persians in two major battles, both times by sending his cavalry directly at the position of the Persian king. Cutting off the head of the snake is the term that the ancient world used and we still use today. So it was Epaminondas who first made that image, that immortal one. He actually held up a snake in front of his army and crushed its head and then showed that crushing the snake's head would kill the whole snake. So if you think of a phalanx line as a long snake, all you need to do is aim for the head and the rest of the body will become useless. So this was the start of a long sequence of battles all through the fourth century in which the goal was really to aim straight at the leadership of

the opposition and knock them out at the first contact. I had no idea that Epaminondas actually, I love that story of actually getting a snake out and showing it in person, James, that's incredible. Yes, and your listeners should know that Philip of Macedon, Alexander's father, for various complicated reasons, he was living at Thebes during this period as a teenager and presumably absorbed the lessons of Epaminondas' leadership and then transferred them to Macedon when he became king. Don't you worry, James, we'll be getting to the Macedonians in due course in this story, no doubt. I mean, just before we do go down to the Macedonians, course in this story, no doubt. I mean, just before we do go down to the Macedonians, because that's like the next big battle on the list, as it were. But between 371 BC, the Battle of Lutra,

and the next big event that we'll be talking about in around 338 BC, in those 30 years or so, I mean, do we have many references to the sacred band in this period? No, and that's unfortunate. We don't have many surviving sources at all for that period. Xenophon's Hellenica ends in 362. And then we have about a 30-year gap before we get to any significant surviving historical sources. So what Thebes was doing, what the Sacred Band was doing, is a bit of a mystery during that time. So what does happen during that time then, James, following Lutra? What happens to Thebes? Does it keep rising or does it meet a, shall we say, a high point?

It very much meets a high point in 364 and 362. Unfortunately, the Thebans did not have a very deep bench, as we say in sports. They didn't have a cadre of leaders that had the vision to sustain the Theban hegemony. The Pamanandas and Palapidas were unique individuals with the vision and the courage to bring Thebes to superpower status. But in two tragic moments in two successive battles, they were both killed in their prime. It was part of Greek warfare that the leading general fought at the head of his troops, and therefore there was always the risk that he would be killed. And as luck would have it, both of them took fatal hits in battle in the

late 360s. And that left Thebes adrift. It didn't have another leader with the same talent, and its fortunes fell off dramatically in the next two or three decades. Just before we continue chronologically then down to that period in the late 4th century BC, James, I noticed in your book how there are quite a few mentions about philosophy and the links to the sacred band and possible mentions of the sacred band. I mean, do we know what philosophers at the time, what they thought of the sacred band and these ideas around possible links to the sacred bands in their work? Well, no philosopher mentions them by name until much later. Plato and Xenophon, two students of Socrates who lived through the era of Theban greatness,

both talk about armies in which lovers are fighting side by side. Plato talks about it in theoretical terms in the Symposium, and Xenophon says specifically that Thebes and another city, Elis, And Xenophon says specifically that Thebes and another city, Elis, put lovers side by side in battle without using the term sacred band. It's clear that Xenophon's aware of events at Thebes. Not as clear in Plato's case because he's talking hypothetically. What if there were an army composed of male lovers? He has one of his characters say in the symposium that army would defeat any foe, even a more numerous one.

My thesis as I develop it in the book is that Plato is talking about the sacred band. He was aware of events at Thebes, and this is a covert reference. He has to make it covert because the symposium is fictionally set in 416 BC, 30 years before the time at which it was written. So he can't use a term like the sacred band because they didn't exist back then. In any case, both principal philosophic writers of this era have discussions of military core made up of male lovers. They're very interested in it. Going on then from that is really interesting in itself. But moving on towards then, let's go on to the big battle, which is the Bast of Chaeronea. Now, you mentioned earlier how Philip had been at Thebes around the time the Bast of Leuteron could have learned from that. But by 338 BC and the

Bast of Chaeronea, I mean, he's on the opposite side of the battlefield. What has led to the rising Macedonian kingdom and Thebes to find themselves on opposite sides of battle at that time? So that's a great question, because it was not at all a foregone conclusion. When Philip started to threaten central Greece, his rising power was clearly a security threat to Athens and the rest of the Greek world. It was not at all clear which side Thebes would be on. They had been allies of Macedon, and Philip had been in residence at Thebes during his teenage years and still had friendly relations with Theban leaders. It seems to have hung in the balance as to which side Thebes would go on.

Demosthenes went to Thebes in person as an Athenian orator and persuaded them, or later on at least, they decided to fight on the Athenian side, that is to oppose Philip. But it was a close call and many of them must have not have been sure which way to go. So Thebes allied with Athens. They'd been at odds for decades before that, but they struck an alliance and brought their combined army to the field of Carinhea. And in that army is the Sacred Band. What happens to the Sacred Band in that battle? So we know a lot about this because the grave of the Sacred Band,

the mass grave, was discovered in the 19th century and excavated. And 254 of the 300 skeletons were found in situ, laid out in phalanx formation in seven rows. Perhaps there was an eighth that hasn't been found, which would make standard phalanx formation. The drawings from that excavation are part of my book. They were found only recently, so this is the first time they've appeared in print, and I think they're fascinating drawings. The excavator, a man named Stamatakis, recorded the wounds on each skeleton as visible on their bones, the hack marks and the fractures, each skeleton as visible on their bones, the hack marks and the fractures, and they underwent terrible, terrible ordeal. Alexander cut them off from the rest of the combined Greek line and had them mowed down to a man. All 300 died on the spot And their wounds, the fracture marks and hack marks recorded by Stamatakis show that they suffered terribly.

And the Lion of Carinia, which some of your listeners will know, it's one of the great sculptures that still stands in situ on the plain of Carinia, was erected over the mass grave as their memorial. That mass grave, that whole story, the combining of the archaeology with the literature that survives for that battle and what happens to the sacred band, and you're mentioning that you've got these incredible drawings from the 19th century excavation in your book. Was it really interesting when looking at the research for this, when writing the book, when talking all about this, looking at the archaeology and the literature combined to try and get a more detailed picture of this event, which is so crucial in the story of the Sacred Band? Yes, that was really my point of entry into the story was the discovery of the tomb and the exhumation of the skeletons.

They tell the story. They tell the tale of how these men died. A couple of the skeletons are still above ground. They were preserved for study. But the resurfacing of the drawings was really a stroke of good fortune. We didn't know that they existed at the time that my researcher and I started looking into this. And they're just absolutely gripping the character of the drawings. And the whole arrangement of this burial, you mentioned how they almost look as if they were in phalanx formation. When looking at the literature then, James, does it seem to show that the Thebans, even though they were defeated at the Battle of Chaeronea, they had this deep love of the Theban sacred band that they

did bury it with extravagant honour. Yes. And even Philip, the head of the opposing army, supposedly rode over to the place where their bodies were piled and commented that these men died with honour and no one should think anything shameful about their life or their death. So he paid them a tribute on the battlefield and then the memorial that was set up over them is clearly meant as an eternal tribute. Just wrapping up now, I mean the whole story of this military unit, it's so interesting to delve into so much detail about it and what we know about it. It's so interesting to talk about this unit, which you mentioned in your book, for four decades, it was one of the most prominent military units on the Greek mainland. It feels like it should deserve more attention than it's

got. So it must feel nice to be lifting a lid on it, as it were. Yes, we pay so much attention to Athens and Sparta because of Thucydides, because we have this magnificent narrative from the 5th century explaining their conflict, what each side was all about. We don't have anything comparable for Thebes. Instead, we have Xenophon who tried to put them in the shadows as much as possible. So it is a real joy to be able to give them their due share of glory and attention. Absolutely, James, you are writing that wrong from ancient history. Last thing, your book on this topic is called? The Sacred Bands, 300 Theban Lovers Fighting to Save Greek Freedom.

Fantastic. James, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast. Oh, it's been my pleasure. Thank you for having me. Редактор субтитров А.Семкин Корректор А.Егорова