Quoting from this site:
The history I’m talking about is ancient history. As in ancient Greece and the Sacred Band of Thebes. Too often forgotten today by anyone who doesn’t specifically study ancient history. The famous army of gay lovers. Yes, that’s right, you heard me. Gay lovers. Undefeated in battle until their last final battle when they perished to a man. This isn’t Hollywood history, or urban legend… this is the real thing. Living and breathing gay men and boys who fought and loved with the complete support of their country. In this case, the city-state of Thebes.
The Sacred Band of Thebes fought the famed army of Sparta, thought to be the finest in ancient Greece, and beat it every time… even though it was always the smaller army on the field. You might be more familiar with the Spartan Army… especially if you saw the recent Hollywood animation version of it’s battle against the Persians in “The 300?. A little historic perspective here: The Spartans were far from being pussies. Their brutal government took boys away from their families and raised them in barracks to be soldiers. They weren’t considered adults until they snuck out of their barracks at night and murdered a member of the lower classes and came back undetected. Literally getting away with murder. That they were defeated repeatedly by the Sacred Band of Thebes really says something.
But I doubt that Hollywood will be doing the story of the Sacred Band any time soon… unless it’s done as a porn flick. You see, you couldn’t join the Sacred Band of Thebes unless you did it with a partner, as in a lover. As in someone you were fucking or who fucked you, to put it bluntly. The idea was that soldiers might something cowardly, or, as the Bushmeister likes to put it, cut and run, in front of other men who are just their fellow soldiers, but they damn sure weren’t likely to do it in front of someone they loved. The men and boys of The Sacred Band of Thebes proved over and over that they would rather die than let down a lover. I say boys because the age that young males became eligible to join the Sacred Band, providing they had a partner, was 16. In an age where humans tended to live hard and die young, 16 was pretty much the age of adulthood.
They lived, fought, and loved until the Macedonian army of Philip II (father of another gay icon of history, Alexander the Great) fought them and completely destroyed them at the battle of Chaeronea. The rest of the Theban army and it’s allies cut and ran, but the Sacred Band kept fighting, to the last man. Philip was so impressed with their courage and valor that he had them buried together in a mass grave and put a monument over them that survives to this day. Visitors to Greece can actually see the lion monument to their bravery… although I have to wonder how much they actually know about the small army of 300 buried beneath their feet. It was recorded that Philip II said of them as he walked the battlefield afterward “Perish any man who suspects that these men either did or suffered anything unseemly.”
I don’t know how you feel about that, but I find it…fascinating.