THE SACRED BAND
Three Hundred Theban Lovers Fighting to Save Greek Freedom
by James Romm
Scribners. 320 pages, $28.
THE SACRED BAND is a tourist’s guide to events that took place between 378 and 338 BCE in the location of today’s Greece, but in fact the time period covered includes explanatory material and connective tissue from somewhat earlier times in a region spanning from Sicily to Persia. The Band in the title refers to the Sacred Band of Thebes, a select cadre of heavily armed infantry made up of male couples, typically one older than the other, but all adults. The underlying theory on which this formation was based, largely derived from Plato, was that soldiers fighting alongside their beloved were fighting for more than their city-state. A soldier would not want to show any whiff of cowardice or a failure of masculine discipline in front of the male soldier who is his lover.
Romm observes that the use of this institution “posed a distinctively Theban answer to Spartan values: instead of machtpolitik and the cult of the state, the Band relied on a native tradition, the view of male eros as a long-lasting, privileged bond.” Same-sex relations were common and not a social issue in Thebes and elsewhere. By contrast, the cult that ruled in Sparta, championed by Xenophon, was one of physical purity and sexual denial. Even playing around with women was scorned, let alone enjoying other men.
Romm is persuasive in arguing that this theory of “The 300” is at least plausible and probably the best explanation for the unit’s establishment as well as for its unique burial after its final battle. This last fight, which ended with the destruction of Thebes, was nominally against Philip of Macedon, but in fact the 300 were up against Philip’s son, the eighteen-year-old Alexander, not yet “the Great” but an exceptional tactician who recognized that the Sacred Band was the heart of the Theban army for both its effectiveness and its morale-building value.
For a reader interested in the social and military history of Greece at this time, the book will no doubt be of interest from the first pages, as the author is unusually gifted in offering a narrative that is readable by a non-specialist, even though he brings in a remarkable number of names, relationships, and alliances along the trail. I sometimes felt carried along, but never lost. For those whose interest is more specifically in the evidence about who The 300 were, what they did, and how their manly connections were perceived at the time and by later scholars, you need to get 100 pages into the book before this material appears. But as the story unfolds, the research supporting the idea that The 300 were in fact a gay male regiment is presented clearly and dispassionately.
Sources for the account include Plutarch, Plato (generally pro-gay), Xenophon (generally anti-gay) and others. Plato’s Republic, written right around this time, includes references to a warrior caste that would also be trained in higher values. In the Symposium, Plato also includes a specific reference to an elite corps of male lovers, so the connection with the Band of Thebes seems quite convincing. The contemporaneous tales include some nuggets: Xenophon, who disliked Thebes, noted that the Spartan King Agesilaus once made a stupid political decision because his son was in love with the son of an opponent. We also get to meet Sostratus the Fingertipper: you’ll have to read the book to fully appreciate his specialty.
Is the book mostly about these gay warriors? No. Is there a lot of detail about how these men actually lived? No. Is the paired-male thesis sufficiently central that it works as a core to the narrative? Yes, though Romm can get a little breezy in checking off evidence and making connections. If we sometimes get a larger dose of regional history than is strictly necessary to advance the main theme, the author never goes too far afield. What makes this book relevant to our interest in LGBT history is not only the existence of a homosexual military unit but also the fact that nothing in the record suggests that these fighters were ill-treated or even considered strange (outside of Sparta). Occasional disparagement crops up in the limited historical record—one man’s mother objected to him running off with an older man—but no moral judgment.
The idea of a gay male military unit, probably based on this example, is still used in fiction today. For example, Kate Elliott has a cavalry unit made up of self-exiled gay men in her Jaran science-fiction series. Romm notes that the Band was most fully understood by Plutarch among classical writers, and may have been an inspiration for Whitman’s “Calamus No. 34,” the original manuscript version of which reads:
I dream’d in a dream of a city where all men were like
brothers,
O I saw them tenderly love each other—I often saw them, in
numbers, walking hand in hand,
I dream’d that was the city of robust friends—Nothing was
greater there than manly love—it led the rest,
It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,
and in all their looks and words.
This is as good an image of the Sacred Band of Thebes as any that we’re likely to find. Fortunately, we now have a worthy chronicle of their times and their glory.
Alan Contreras is a writer living in Eugene, Oregon.
