jdact
A Band of Lovers and Beloveds
« The Sacred Band is described as an elite Theban military
force of three hundred men that remained undefeated for about forty years in
the middle of the fourth century B.C.E.. The band was credited with victories
over much larger Spartan forces at Tegyra in 375 and again at Leuctra
in 371
and was eventually annihilated by the forces of Philip at Chaeronea in 338.
A few scholars have detected references to the Sacred Band that fall outside
this period. Some point to a passage in Diodorus that describes a special
Theban force of three hundred composed of charioteers and footmen that fought
at the front of the line at the Battle of Delium in 424: these were probably
originally pairs of men who fought from chariots in the Homeric fashion,
although in 424 they were clearly fighting as hoplites. Others have pointed
to a third-century epigram by Phaedimus in which Apollo of Schoenus (a village
near Thebes) is asked to direct an arrow of Eros at these youths in order that
they defend their fatherland, emboldened by the friendship of young men.
Neither passage, however, mentions the Sacred Band by name, and the poem by
Phaedimus may be alluding to the tradition of an earlier Sacred Band or even be
invoking a more generic topos about the role of eros in binding a fighting force together.
Our primary focus in this chapter is the tradition
that the Sacred Band was composed of pairs of lovers and their beloveds, and it
will be useful, before we begin to examine the sources for this tradition, to
consider just what this means. It surely does not mean simply that pederastic
affairs were permitted to intrude on army life at Thebes, as such intrusions
were apparently not uncommon in Greek armies. We hear, for example, of Greek
soldiers on campaign quarreling over paidika or pursuing boys who
happened to be in camp or in a village nearby. Occasionally paidika are
described as being present during battle itself, but when our sources are
specific about what they are doing there it often turns out that they are not
actively engaged in fighting. Xenophon's account of the Spartan general
Anaxibius and his beloved at Cremaste in 389 B. C. E., is illustrative.
Anaxibius and twelve Spartan harmosts are said to have died fighting, whereas
Anaxibius's beloved, whose fate is described between that of Anaxibius and the
harmosts, is said merely to have remained by [Anaxibius's] side. Xenophon does
not say that the boy was a regular in the army, nor would we expect him to be:
boys who were still young enough to be eromenoi were generally not old
enough to be part of the muster». In David Leitão, The Legend of the Sacred
Band, The Sleep of Reason, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London,
USA, 2002, ISBN 0-226-60915-4.
Cortesia
de UChicago/JDACT