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The Sacred Band: Three Hundred Theban Lovers Fighting to Save Greek Freedom
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About The Sacred Band: Three Hundred Theban Lovers
Product Description From classicist James Romm comes a thrilling deep dive into the last decades of ancient Greek freedom leading up to Alexander the Great’s destruction of Thebes—and the saga of the greatest military corps of the age, the Theban Sacred Band, a unit composed of 150 pairs of male lovers. The story of the Sacred Band, an elite 300-man corps recruited from pairs of lovers, highlights a chaotic era of ancient Greek history, four decades marked by battles, ideological disputes, and the rise of vicious strongmen. At stake was freedom, democracy, and the fate of Thebes, at this time the leading power of the Greek world. The tale begins in 379 BC, with a group of Theban patriots sneaking into occupied Thebes. Disguised in women’s clothing, they cut down the agents of Sparta, the state that had cowed much of Greece with its military might. To counter the Spartans, this group of patriots would form the Sacred Band, a corps whose history plays out against a backdrop of Theban democracy, of desperate power struggles between leading city-states, and the new prominence of eros, sexual love, in Greek public life. After four decades without a defeat, the Sacred Band was annihilated by the forces of Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander in the Battle of Chaeronea—extinguishing Greek liberty for two thousand years. Buried on the battlefield where they fell, they were rediscovered in 1880—some skeletons still in pairs, with arms linked together. From violent combat in city streets to massive clashes on open ground, from ruthless tyrants to bold women who held their era in thrall, The Sacred Band follows the twists and turns of a crucial historical moment: the end of the treasured freedom of ancient Greece. Review "Romm, a Bard College professor, has an unusual knack for writing about ancient history for general readers ... I was most stirred by a parallel narrative examining how the story of the Sacred Band both inspired the beginnings of the struggle for gay acceptance in the 19th century and was also long a source of discomfort for many professional classicists." —The New York Times, New & Noteworthy "[Romm] deftly pieces the story together ... Mr. Romm negotiates artfully in fluent, accessible prose. But he really comes into his own when describing the Sacred Band’s dramatic and elegiac end." —Wall Street Journal "Romm’s book not only details the history of the Sacred Band, but illuminates this murky and murderously internecine period of Greek history ... Romm has an eye for interesting characters—such as the sociopathic tyrant Jason of Pherae, who made his spear into a god." —The American Scholar "A vivid portrait of ancient Thebes ... A spirited, informative classical history from an expert on the subject." —Kirkus "In this excellent work, Romm ... convincingly argues that Thebes was as important as Athens and Sparta during the last century of its history ... Excellent vignettes of contemporary non-Thebans (particularly Xenophon, an Athenian student of Socrates who was an unabashed partisan for Sparta) enhance the narrative ... [ The Sacred Band] is highly recommended and will appeal to fans of Thebes, by Paul Cartledge, as well as readers of LGBTQ+ history." —Library Journal "Romm lucidly describes the era’s complex power struggles and explains how the pro-Sparta bias of Xenophon, who wrote the only surviving contemporaneous account of “the era of Theban greatness,” has colored modern perceptions of Thebes. This is an eye-opening and immersive portrait of a little-known aspect of ancient history." —Publishers Weekly "Striking ... [a] fascinating unit." —Booklist "Lively and captivating ... this first full-length popular account dedicated to the “Sacred Band” performs a vital and overdue service: for classical history buffs, for readers interested in gay history and culture, and for anyone who appreciates a fascinating story, grippingly told." —Daniel Mendelsohn, author of An Odyssey: A Fat
