Were spartans gay lovers

They sent the Spartan cavalry in retreat, and the galloping horses left the scene foggy with dust. The clash of the warring city-states came near the village of Leuctra that year, hence how the name of the battle was conceived.

Bravely fighting, the Sacred Band seemed invincible. The two armies first clashed with their horsemen, and the Theban side proved to have greater merit. But instead of escaping the battlefield, Pelopidas engaged his men in another attack, and in a single swift move, another hoard of enemy soldiers were taken down.

The Spartans approached the battlefield in a familiar formation, boosting a powerful right wing, and the Thebans grouped themselves accordingly. He had two male lovers: Asopichus, who fought together with him at the battle of Leuctra, where he greatly distinguished himself, [12] and Caphisodorus, the latter died with him at Mantineia in battle.

Vulnerable and without guidance, the Spartans held back to allow the much smaller Theban force to leave intact. In B. By this time, Sparta was officially at war with Thebes. Xenophon, whose own sons were educated in the Spartan agoge, wrote that pederastic homosexual relationships were considered “on par with the act of incest,” and Aristotle bemoaned the fact that Spartan women had so much power, attributing Sparta’s problems to the lack of homosexual relationships in Spartan society.

It was a glorious victory, and Pelopidas hired the Sacred Band for any military campaign that followed. They broke the Spartan line, killing their leader rather quickly. But who were these brave-fighting people? The establishment of this extraordinary force is credited to Gorgidas, a chief officer of Boeotia, in B.

Each one of them was a skilled wrestler, dancer, and horseback rider, and selected on their ability to fight. According to ancient sources and various historians, all of them were homosexual lovers, exceptionally well-trained pairs of them. Same sex relationships were considered morally acceptable in the times of ancient Greece and accounts testifying to this are numerous.

The Ancient Greek Army

When Pelopidas took control of the Band, he reformed the faction of into an elite fighting unit. Epaminondas and Caphisodorus were buried together, [13] something usually reserved for a husband and wife in Greek society. The army of same-sex lovers who made up Sparta's biggest rivals Although their fearsome reputation is well established in the historical sources, they were by no means the only professional soldiers with a formidable reputation on the battlefield that arose from ancient Greece.

Again the Spartans were facing a bitter defeat. Among historians, however, one of the most hotly debated questions is whether these men were really all homosexuals. At the battle of Tegyra that played out in B. The clash unfolded near a shrine of Apollo in the region, where the Sacred Band was led by its then-leader Pelopidas.

As any great army that celebrated big victories, the Spartans witnessed some terrible debacles on the battlefield, too. The thinly numbered men were surprisingly met by the much larger Spartan unit, and at first, the situation looked desperate. But the profound connection between two males may well have been specifically perceived as battlefield-ready exclusively in the military circles of Thebes.

Among the thousands who were killed in the assault was the Spartan king, Cleombrotus I. The demise of the Sacred Band came years later, at the hands of a new rivalry on the peninsula, one led by Philip II and his son Alexander the Great.