Review by Booklist Review
Romm's The Sacred Band focuses the forty-year span during which the city-state of Thebes fielded as an elite force a unit made up of 150 male couples. The theory the author refers to states that fighting alongside one's partner would heighten the passion and drive needed to defeat enemies and protect loved ones. The product of a NEH Public Scholars Fellowship, the work is presented in a straightforward manner for a general audience. Romm covers necessary background for the era as well as details of major players. The most striking features are the illustrations made of the remains found at the burial site of the last members of the Band. Dying in a battle against Alexander the Great, these men were buried in a memorial that was studied and sketched around 1880. Through digital manipulation, the text provides a comprehensive view of all the bodies together as they would have been discovered. Romm also provides an extensive reading list and a link to his website for foreign language materials for those interested in more detail on this fascinating unit.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Bard College classics professor Romm (Dying Every Day) delivers a brisk account of the city-state of Thebes focused on the Sacred Band, an elite fighting force made up of 150 "male couples, stationed in pairs such that each man fought beside his beloved." Often overshadowed in historical accounts by its rivals, Sparta and Athens, Thebes was unique in ancient Greece for its acceptance of homosexuality (men were allowed to exchange vows and live together as couples). Founded to protect Thebes after a coup attempt (likely orchestrated by Spartan leader Agesilaus), was defeated, the Sacred Band helped serve Sparta its first battlefield loss in centuries at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BCE, rattling Greece's power structures. Thebes then set up a series of walled cities and federations, creating a network of allies that extended Theban power in the region and isolated enemies. But those alliances shifted in the decades that followed, setting the stage for Alexander the Great's annihilation of the Sacred Band in 338 BCE. Though short on specifics about the Sacred Band itself, 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. (June)
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Review by Library Journal Review
In this excellent work, Romm (classics, Bard Coll.; Ghost on the Throne) convincingly argues that Thebes was as important as Athens and Sparta during the last century of its history (400--330 BCE). The title gives first billing to the Sacred Band, a warrior group of 300 paired male lovers, but most of the author's attention is deservedly given over to Thebes's dynamic leaders Pelopidas and Epaminondas, whose efforts propelled the Egyptian city to prominence. Their deaths immediately preceded--and likely precipitated--Theban decline and the city's ultimate destruction at the hands of Alexander the Great. Excellent vignettes of contemporary non-Thebans (particularly Xenophon, an Athenian student of Socrates who was an unabashed partisan for Sparta) enhance the narrative. In fascinating asides, Romm also recounts classicists' confrontation, from the 19th century onward, of the history of the Sacred Band, which meant wrestling with their own attitudes towards gay love; some classicists denied its existence outright, while others secretly yearned to embrace it. VERDICT Interest in Thebes among general readers of popular classics is rising; as such, this book is highly recommended and will appeal to fans of Thebes, by Paul Cartledge, as well as readers of LGBTQ+ history.--Evan M. Anderson, Kirkendall P.L., Ankeny, IA
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A vivid portrait of ancient Thebes. In 1880, archaeologists discovered a mass grave, dug by Thebans in 338 B.C.E., containing 254 skeletons laid side by side. The discovery was never published, the grave covered up. Thankfully, a researcher for this book located the chief excavator's notebook, containing drawings of each skeleton--several reproduced in this volume--that document in meticulous detail the unique features of the burial site. As Bard College classics professor Romm reveals, the skeletons composed "a unique infantry corp" of male lovers, fighting in pairs, known to Greeks as the Sacred Band." The Age of the Sacred Band spanned four decades, 382 B.C.E. to 335 B.C.E., during which Thebes enjoyed victories against Sparta and Athens, the two cities most prominent in histories of ancient Greece. The author offers a corrective to that view by focusing on democratic Thebes, which had founded Messene, "a city that sheltered Sparta's escaped slaves"; defeated Sparta at the Battle of Leuctra in 371; and remained undefeated until, in 338, it confronted the ruthless Alexander the Great. Decades of war saw decisive shifts of power: Sparta occupied Thebes and invaded Boetia; Thebes invaded the Peloponnese and nearly captured Sparta. "Athens had aided Thebes when Sparta was winning," Romm writes, "then allied with weakened Sparta against Thebes." Romm weaves into a brisk narrative of military strategies, expedient alliances, supernatural interventions, and political rivalries an examination of the idea of the male eros, which Greek texts--including Plutarch's Parallel Lives and Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus--as well as the existence of the Sacred Band itself, made visible for the first time. Drawing on 19th-century documents, Romm shows how deeply the Sacred Band interested homosexuals such as Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, and John Addington Symonds, who identified himself as "Uranian," a term derived from Plato. As in ancient Greece, Uranians were heartened to discover the connection of male eros to heroism and valor. A spirited, informative classical history from an expert on the subject. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
