A day after Independence Day in america, the world’s richest man introduced on X that he would type a brand new political celebration referred to as the America Celebration. A follow-up from Elon Musk revealed that he supposed to interrupt up the present “uniparty” system by means of the usage of an Historic Greek army tactic, “a variant of how Epaminondas shattered the myth of Spartan invincibility at Leuctra: extremely concentrated force at a precise location on the battlefield.” The wording was imprecise, but it surely adopted Musk’s performative sample of invoking the Greco-Roman world. From his references to historic leaders just like the Roman dictator Sulla to tweets in Latin with out an English translation, Musk steadily attracts on the traditional world as a method of telegraphing a conservative mind. And but, the technocrat’s reference to Epaminondas makes one wonder if he might have missed the irony of alluding to a battle whereby it was queer troopers who helped obtain victory.
Because the nineteenth century, the famed Theban army unit generally known as the Sacred Band has been an icon for homosexual rights. Within the fourth century BCE, Epaminondas of Samos was a basic for the town of Thebes within the central Greek area of Boeotia. By 371 BCE, he turned a Boeotarch, one of many main Boeotian federal officers within the newly established democracy. As a diplomat, he tried to dealer peace with the bellicose Spartans to the south, however in the end, Boeotia and Sparta clashed on the Battle of Leuctra that very same 12 months. Throughout the battle, the Thebans famously deployed the Sacred Band of Thebes to assist clinch victory. The elite unit of 300 foot troopers from the town, initially fashioned round 379 BCE, consisted of pairs of lover-warriors who marched into battle collectively. On the battle of Leuctra, the one which Musk referenced, they have been led by a famed basic named Pelopidas.
The power of the unit emanated partly from their deep attachment to one another. The Thebans weren’t the one Greek tradition to make use of this strategy: There was same-sex love in a lot of Greek army models past the Sacred Band, from Achilles’ and Patroclus’ doubtless relationship within the Trojan Conflict to the usage of same-sex {couples} paired collectively in battlelines for the Greek metropolis of Elis. Musk and plenty of different conservatives, like Steve Bannon, typically omit the position of sexuality in historic army successes when extolling the virtues of Greek warriors.
Elon Musk’s latest posts on X (screenshots Hyperallergic)
However why did Thebes promote same-sex love explicitly? James Romm, the main professional on the unit and writer of The Sacred Band: Three Hundred Theban Lovers Combating to Save Greek Freedom (2021), informed me that the power of the Sacred Band “came from the determination of lovers to excel in the eyes of their partners and to protect their partners from harm.” The Thebans inspired relationships between male troopers to make use of love as a method of cementing army safety. One of many founders of the Sacred Band allegedly remarked that “the only general that can never be beaten is Eros,” Romm stated, suggesting that “romantic love is the strongest motivation that could be harnessed on the battlefield.” In different phrases, bravery in battle might be inspired by means of each love of 1’s homeland and love for one’s boyfriend.
If Musk is conscious of how a lot the Battle of Leuctra relied on the Sacred Band — and thus folks we might in the present day establish as members of the LGBTQ+ group — he didn’t sign it, and his latest monitor document has proven that he continues to not be an ally to the group. The scion steadily donates to politicians hostile to LGBTQ+ rights each right here and overseas and has allowed hateful and abusive speech on X since his acquisition of the social media web site in 2022, mocked pronouns, and tweeted transphobic messages towards trans individuals, together with his personal daughter.
Element from an attic black-figure neck amphora with soldier scene from the Iliad (ca. 540–520 BCE) (picture through Wikimedia Commons)
Musk’s references to antiquity typically appear to be extra about cherry-picking than misconstruing, and his AI is simply perpetuating this selective bias. He educated his “un-woke” AI bot, Grok, on texts that turned it right into a Nazi. This means of utilizing selective texts for AI coaching creates an echo chamber of omission and prejudice. Conservative give attention to army may over queerness would, to my thoughts, more than likely consequence within the existence of historic queerness being extra steadily omitted or occluded if AI is educated solely on right-wing media. AI merely mimics, perpetuates, after which makes an attempt to normalize the biases of the texts it’s constructed upon.
In his performative mentions of the Greco-Roman world, Musk leans closely on the status of the classical “tradition,” a constructed notion typically celebrated in conservative circles. This affection for “classics” is embodied in initiatives just like the Christian-backed, conservative various to the SAT and ACT, the Traditional Studying Take a look at (CLT), which purports to attract on “classic texts,” from Aristotle to Shakespeare, to fight “wokeness.” However there are obtrusive omissions as soon as once more: The listing of historic texts for the CLT excludes the work of the lesbian poet Sappho, together with any evaluation of the prevalence and acceptance of same-sex love in antiquity. This Could, Republican Senator Jim Banks launched a invoice to advertise the CLT at army academies and federally operated colleges. The invoice, which has not handed the Senate however has been referred to the Committee on Armed Companies, would encourage the usage of the CLT at establishments like West Level and the Naval Academy, additional enmeshing the instructing of antiquity and the idea of army valor.
Achilles sits subsequent to Patroclus as he surrenders Briseis, his hostage concubine, in a fresco from Pompeii from the first century CE (picture by Marie-Lan Nguyen through Wikimedia Commons)
Just like the CLT, the curation of Greco-Roman antiquity filtered by means of motion pictures, popular culture, and books typically downplays or omits the queerness all through the Historic Greek world. Within the film Troy (2004), there aren’t any homoerotic parts to the connection between Achilles and Patroclus (they have been cousins!), whereas there was backlash to Netflix’s Troy: Fall of a Metropolis (2018) as a result of the usage of a Black actor as Achilles, in addition to the steamy threesome between Achilles, Patroclus, and Briseis. The sanitized, straight model of antiquity typically offered to the general public omits the lengthy historical past of homosexual and trans figures all through the premodern Mediterranean, deletions or modifications that authors like Roland Betancourt, Madeline Miller, and Sarah Nooter have sought to return to the traditional world. In Nooter’s new How one can Be Queer: An Historic Information to Sexuality, the College of Chicago Classics professor makes use of snippets from dozens of historic authors to underscore “what the Greeks knew long ago — that the erotic and queer are a source of life and a cause for celebration.”
What’s the final harm of a classical custom that LGBTQ+ persons are excised from? “Tradition” can function a method of reinforcing a conservative building of masculinity. Highly effective males like Musk or Mark Zuckerberg typically reference the traditional leaders of the previous as examples of their most popular sort of right-wing masculinity: straight. However Cambridge classicist Simon Goldhill put it eloquently when he famous that references to Greco-Roman antiquity are sometimes extra about presenting oneself because the end result of a convention than presenting an correct imaginative and prescient of that previous. Such custom deploys a “historically privileged continuity: a line, an ancestry, a promise.” Like Musk himself, the invocations of those traditions are sometimes self-serving.
The Sacred Band got here to an finish in 338 BCE on the Battle of Chaeronea, after Philip II of Macedon and his son, Alexander, and their troops triumphed over Thebes. Plutarch notes the awe with which Philip seemed on the fallen members of the Sacred Band on the battlefield thereafter. In 1880, almost 300 skeletons have been found in a mass burial beneath the soil. As Romm argues, that is doubtless the ultimate resting place of the Sacred Band of Thebes.
A Roman-era mosaic from the Poseidon Villa in Zeugma, Turkey, depicting Achilles disguised as a lady and Odysseus tricking him into revealing himself (picture through Wikimedia Commons)
From the late nineteenth century onward, the Sacred Band and their burial at Chaeronea served as an inventive touchstone for homosexual artists and organizers. Not lengthy after the trials of Oscar Wilde in 1895 shook homosexual communities in Europe and overseas, the poet, author, and homosexual activist George Cecil Ives proposed to start an underground group referred to as the Order of Chaeronea, one of many earliest recognized homosexual rights societies. That they had rings made for his or her group and banded collectively to battle laws prohibiting homosexuality, amongst many different causes. Later, queer illustrators and writers like Laurence Housman (brother of classicist and poet A.E. Housman) joined Ives and the order, ultimately co-founding one other homosexual rights group, the British Society for the Examine of Intercourse Psychology. From 1909 on, Housman additionally performed a pivotal half in organizing males to help ladies’s suffrage and creating the artist workshop generally known as the Suffrage Atelier.
Historic Greece was a touchstone for these early activists. In The Sacred Band, Romm notes that Ives referred to as members of the Order of Chaeronea “Hellenists.” This was “his term for those who found inspiration in Greek male erôs [love].” To homosexual communities of the previous and current, the Battle of Leuctra and the Sacred Band signify rather more than only a army tactic. And the teachings that the army unit supplies proceed to this present day. As Romm remarks, as a result of male homosexuality is steadily related “with softness or effeminacy,” homosexual and trans individuals are sometimes slandered as embodying qualities in opposition to army prowess. Nonetheless, “the Sacred Band, and the Greeks generally,” Romm argues, “demonstrate the opposite case.” For a lot of activists from Victorian England to in the present day, this unit exemplifies the talents of queer troopers who drew on their love of each other as an plain power. If Musk had recognized even a fraction of this historical past of the Sacred Band, he maybe would have realized that his plans for a brand new political celebration are moderately magnificently “woke” certainly.
