sexta-feira, 13 de fevereiro de 2015

The Sleep of Reason. The Legend of the Sacred Band. David Leitão. «Occasionally paidika are described as being present during battle itself, but when our sources are specific about what they are doing there it often turns out that they are not actively engaged in fighting»

jdact

A Band of Lovers and Beloveds
« The Sacred Band is described as an elite Theban military force of three hundred men that remained undefeated for about forty years in the middle of the fourth century B.C.E.. The band was credited with victories over much larger Spartan forces at Tegyra in 375 and again at Leuctra in 371 and was eventually annihilated by the forces of Philip at Chaeronea in 338. A few scholars have detected references to the Sacred Band that fall outside this period. Some point to a passage in Diodorus that describes a special Theban force of three hundred composed of charioteers and footmen that fought at the front of the line at the Battle of Delium in 424: these were probably originally pairs of men who fought from chariots in the Homeric fashion, although in 424 they were clearly fighting as hoplites. Others have pointed to a third-century epigram by Phaedimus in which Apollo of Schoenus (a village near Thebes) is asked to direct an arrow of Eros at these youths in order that they defend their fatherland, emboldened by the friendship of young men. Neither passage, however, mentions the Sacred Band by name, and the poem by Phaedimus may be alluding to the tradition of an earlier Sacred Band or even be invoking a more generic topos about the role of eros in binding a fighting force together.
Our primary focus in this chapter is the tradition that the Sacred Band was composed of pairs of lovers and their beloveds, and it will be useful, before we begin to examine the sources for this tradition, to consider just what this means. It surely does not mean simply that pederastic affairs were permitted to intrude on army life at Thebes, as such intrusions were apparently not uncommon in Greek armies. We hear, for example, of Greek soldiers on campaign quarreling over paidika or pursuing boys who happened to be in camp or in a village nearby. Occasionally paidika are described as being present during battle itself, but when our sources are specific about what they are doing there it often turns out that they are not actively engaged in fighting. Xenophon's account of the Spartan general Anaxibius and his beloved at Cremaste in 389 B. C. E., is illustrative. Anaxibius and twelve Spartan harmosts are said to have died fighting, whereas Anaxibius's beloved, whose fate is described between that of Anaxibius and the harmosts, is said merely to have remained by [Anaxibius's] side. Xenophon does not say that the boy was a regular in the army, nor would we expect him to be: boys who were still young enough to be eromenoi were generally not old enough to be part of the muster». In David Leitão, The Legend of the Sacred Band, The Sleep of Reason, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, USA, 2002, ISBN 0-226-60915-4.

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