Sexual life in ancient Greece : with thirty-two full-page plates

THE ETHICS OF GREEK LOVE

exclamation), the friend of Epameinondas, had coined. He blamed Homer, since in the Jhad (ii, 363) Nestor once makes the people draw themselves up for battle ‘‘ arranged according to clans and tribes”, and thinks that he ought to have formed the order of battle of pairs and friends, since it would then have been indissoluble and unbreakable. The sacred band proved itself brilliantly in the battle of Mantinea, in which Epaminondas fell with Cephisodorus, and the traditions of the gallant band maintained themselves unconquered until the defeat of Chzronea, in which the flower of Greek freedom was broken. When the victor, King Philip of Macedon, surveyed the field of battle after the engagement and saw that all the bodies of the 300 had fatal wounds in their breasts, he could not suppress his tears, and said: ‘‘ Woe to them who think evil of such men.”

It is easy to quote parallels to the Theban sacred band. ‘The words with which Plato attests the greater excellence in war and the lofty joy of sacrifice of these hosts have already been quoted, although Socrates indeed in Xenophon’s Symposion (8, 32) does not declare his agreement with them unreservedly. But let one read the story in Xenophon’s Anabasis (vil, iv, 7) of the emulation of Episthenes and a boy, how each is ready to suffer death for the other. It was that same Episthenes of Olynthus, who later “ formed a whole company of beautiful youths and proved himself a hero amongst them”. In the Cyropedia (vii, 1, 30) it is said once that ‘it has been shown many times on other occasions that there can be no stronger order of battle than one composed of comrades who are close friends’, which is confirmed in the battle between Cyrus and Creesus, no less than in the battle of Cunaxa (Anab., i, 8, 25; i, 9, 31), in which together with the younger Cyrus his “ friends and messmates ” also suffer the death of heroes. All this is confirmed by Elian (Var. hist., iii, 9), who explains

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