The Band of Gay Lovers That Decimated The Fiercest Army The World Had Known

How the Sacred Band of Thebes changed history

Background: The Political Dichotomy That Tore Greece Asunder

For thirty brutal years (434–404 BC) the nations surrounding the Aegean Sea were embroiled in a bitter civil war. On one side sat Sparta, an unrelenting Oligarchy, whose power increased through its military interventions provided by the finest warriors the world had yet known. The Spartan phalanx.

Sparta’s influence created an “alliance” of city-states called the Peloponnesian League that were more obligated, rather than volunteered, to settle beneath Spartan authority. However, the political ideology of Sparta and its growing influence did not sit well with others.

Athens, a Democracy, with its own alliance of city-states, called the Delian League, whose formation was to prepare for future invasions from the Persians, resisted the growing power of Sparta. The contrast between political ideologies (not too dissimilar to our own political spectrum) wove chaos between city-states and their inhabitants. Thucydides reflected on the atrocities committed by the people of Corcyra, whose population tore each other apart:

The Corcyraeans were…