Thread by @BretDevereaux

Ok, so this ill-informed take has been bouncing around twitter for a day, so let's put it out of my misery.

@pegobry here is just wrong about the Sacred Band and thus has managed the rare feat of being wrong about something in the ancient world we are fairly certain about. 1/19

https://twitter.com/pegobry/status/1406541301730906112

Ancient evidence being what it is (acoup.blog/2021/03/26/fir…), almost everything in ancient history comes with at least some residual uncertainty, but this fellow has managed to pick something quite certain to be wrong about.

So let's go through the evidence. 2/19

Plutarch is our clearest source and he relates (Plut. Pelop. 18.1-2, but also in the Moralia, etc) that the Theban Sacred Band, formed by Gorgidas, was "three hundred chosen men...some say composed of lovers and beloved." 3/19

Lest we fix on that ἔνιοι δέ φασιν ('but some say'), Plutarch then goes on for a whole section about the benefits in cohesion offered by such an arrangement (complete with a requisite quote from Homer...because Plutarch)... 4/19

...and wraps up with an anecdote from Philip II who having seen the band fall to a man at Chaeronea is said to have declared - if I may translate idiomatically - "Anyone who thinks these guys did or experienced anything disgraceful should die in a fire." 5/19

Now of course the fact that Philip has to say this (or Plutarch thinks he does) might suggest the degree of discomfort Plutarch has with this institution (c.f. Xenophon's discomfort with Spartan pederastic bonding, Xen. Lac. 2.12-14). 6/19

This isn't the place to get into Greek attitudes towards homosexuality and pederasty, but they were complex (by the by, Roman attitudes are, contra the original thread, very much *NOT* a good guide to Greek attitudes - they were very different!). 7/19

Plutarch isn't alone in this though. Polyaenus (2.5.1) gives an unambiguous report; the English translation you'll see reads that they were "devoted to each other by mutual obligations of love" but this is a rather circumspect way to read the Greek. 8/19

The Greek reads, "ὁ λόχος ἦν ἐρασταὶ καὶ ἐρώμενοι τριακόσιοι."

"The lochos (unit) were 300 lovers and beloveds" - ἐρασταὶ and ἐρώμενοι are the same terms Plutarch uses and are the unambiguous technical terms for men in a physical homosexual relationship. 9/19

Athenaeus of Naucratis (13.78) also reports this. Once again, the public domain translations you'll find (Yonge: "For in the presence of his favourite, a man would chose to do anything rather than get the character of a coward") are rather less blunt than the Greek. 10/19

The Greek reads something closer to, "A lover, in the presence of his darling boy (παιδικῶν - it's an idiomatic use of παιδικός - adj. meaning 'boyish' but see the LSJ entry, A.III.2 for the substantive use meaning something like 'boyfriend' or 'darling')... 11/19

...would do anything rather than think himself to have been taken as a coward by his darling."

To be clear, both 'lover' and 'darling' here are explicitly male, Greek being one of those languages with clear grammatical genders. 12/19

Athenaeus then provides the Sacred Band of Thebes (he thinks it was founded by Epaminondas, not Gorgidas) as an example of this principle in action. 13/19

Now it is true none of these sources are contemporary to the band itself; Plutarch is early second century, Polyaenus is mid/late-second century and Athenaeus is late-second/early-third century.

But there's no alternative tradition here. 14/19

So the original tweet is simply wrong in a lazy, unambiguous way. There are interesting debates to be had over other questions, like if Achilles&Patroclus were intended to be lovers in the text of the Iliad, or the details of Greek attitudes towards homosexuality. 15/19

But this isn't one of those. Honestly, given how limited & often contradictory ancient source material is, how difficult archaeological evidence can be, it is a real challenge to manage to be decisively wrong on a point where there is no uncertainty.

Mission accomplished? 16/19

So, summing up: it is the explicit - and to my knowledge unanimous - testimony of the sources that the Sacred Band did in fact consist of 150 matched pairs of male lovers. 17/19

And also, on no less authority than Philip II, King of the Macedonians, anyone who thinks that fact was disgraceful - presumably understood to include @pegobry - can die in a fire (Plut. Pelop. 18.5)

(He actually says ἀπόλοιντο κακῶς, "Let them perish horribly") 18/19

If you want to read more about the Sacred Band, @JamesRomm has literally *just* written a book about them. I haven't had a chance to read it (yet!!), but Romm won't steer you wrong, so give it a read.

end/19

simonandschuster.com/books/The-Sacr…