The Battle of Chaereonea by Edmund Ollier (1882). Public DomainThe special forces of Ancient Greece, from the Band of Thebes to the Hetairoi of the army of Alexander the Great, went down in history for their many heroic victories in battle.Thanks to Homer’s Iliad, the Myrmidons of Achilles are the most widely known army of…
The Sacred Band of Thebes went down in history for the memorable fighting force of an elite unit of same-sex couples that serve as proof of the power of love.
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Image courtesy Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, Directorate of the Management of the National Archive of Monuments, Department of the Historical Archive of Antiquities and Restorations
In June, 1818, during a visit to central Greece, a young English architect named George Ledwell Taylor went out riding with some friends in order to explore the ruins of an ancient town called Chaeronea. As Taylorâs party neared its destination, his horse took a âfearful stumble,â as he later recalled, on a stone in the roadway; on further inspection, he saw that the stone was, in fact, part of a sculpture. Energetic digging eventually revealed an animal head nearly six feet highâor, as Taylor put it, a âcolossal head of the Lion.â