Why Did Ancient Greeks Send Gay Couples Into Battle?

Why did Ancient Greeks build an army of gay lovers? Because they believed the one thing a man fears more than dying is being seen as a coward by the person he loves. This is the true story of the Sacred Band of Thebes: 300 soldiers, 150 couples, and the army that broke Sparta. It's Thebes, about 2,400 years ago, and Spartan soldiers have taken your city. You're a wine merchant. They drink at your stall, they never pay, and if Thebes fights back and loses, your wife, your daughters and you can be sold. Then one winter night, men dressed as women walk into a party with swords under their dresses, and the city is free. But Sparta will be back. So a Theban general builds a new army, and he fills it with couples. The whole market laughs. This animated history explainer follows the Sacred Band of Thebes from the night it was born to the day it died. Find out why love between men was out in the open in Ancient Greece, why Greeks thought an army of lovers "would beat the world", and why some Greeks rolled their eyes at the whole idea. Watch the Band face a Spartan army three times its size at Tegyra, then smash Sparta's best men at the Battle of Leuctra with a battering-ram formation fifty men deep. Then, thirty years later, comes Philip of Macedon, his 18-year-old son Alexander, and the Battle of Chaeronea, where everyone else ran. Tiny Greeks tells animated stories about everyday life in Ancient Greece: the strange rules, the hard choices and the real people behind the history. Weird questions about the ancient Greeks. CHAPTERS 00:00 THE PARTY: How Thebes got free from Sparta 02:23 THE RUMOR: Thebes builds an army of lovers 03:30 WHY LOVERS? Love and courage in Ancient Greece 06:18 WILL THEY RUN? The Battle of Tegyra 08:48 CAN THEY WIN? The Battle of Leuctra 11:29 WHAT IF THEY CAN'T WIN? The Battle of Chaeronea 13:39 THE ANSWER: Why the Greeks built the Sacred Band So, be honest. Would you have let your son join? A) yes, and you'd be proud, B) no way, or C) forget your son, you'd be the first one running. Tell me in the comments. Subscribe to Tiny Greeks for more weird questions about the ancient Greeks. HISTORICAL NOTES & SOURCES The wine merchant, his family and his son are a dramatised point of view; the events around them are from ancient accounts. The market people being chased back into the Theban camp at Leuctra is in Xenophon. Most of what we know about the Band, including the lovers, comes from Plutarch, writing about 400 years later; Xenophon, who lived through it, never names the Band, and some historians think the lovers detail may be partly legend. The orator who threw away his shield at Chaeronea (Demosthenes) is a story told about him. The grave under the Lion of Chaeronea held about 250 men in rows; most historians think it is the Band, but not all. The "bear" line is a modern saying, not an ancient one. The Band were adult soldiers; the video notes that wider Greek customs included relationships we'd find wrong today. • Plutarch, Life of Pelopidas 10–11, 17–19, 23 (the party coup, Tegyra, the founding of the Band, Leuctra, Philip's words at Chaeronea). • Plutarch, Life of Alexander 9; Life of Demosthenes 20. • Plato, Symposium 178e–179b (an army of lovers "would overcome the world"). • Xenophon, Symposium 8.32–35 (the skeptic's view); Hellenica 5.4 and 6.4 (Thebes under Sparta, Leuctra, the market people, the Spartans' midday wine). • Diodorus, Library of History 16.85–86 (Chaeronea). • Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.40 (the Lion of Chaeronea). • Further reading: James Romm, The Sacred Band (2021); D. Leitao (2002) on the "lovers" tradition; K. J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality (1978). #AncientGreece #GreekHistory #TinyGreeks