We can already see an impressive trailer for the film 300, based on the work of Frank Miller, and which tells the heroic deed of the 300 Spartans who, under the command of their king Leonidas, resisted the advance of the Persian army at the pass of Thermopylae.
After five days of battle the Spartans (along with some Thespians and Thebans who had remained) were defeated. His sacrifice was essential to give the rest of the Greeks time to prepare for defense.
Until today this is one of the most memorable and decisive battles in History. But who were these 300 Spartans who died fighting far from their land, for their honor and freedom? They were not just any citizens. They were the elite body of the Spartan army.
And curiously, in ancient times they were not the 300 most famous . That honor was left to another 300, the elite corps of the Theban army called the Sacred Battalion .
The Sacred Battalion was, as Wikipedia says, an elite Greek troop of 150 pairs of lovers (understood in the sense it was given at the time), made up of an older member and a younger one. They were feared in combat and respected by their enemies, for a very simple reason that Plutarch explains:
Invincible throughout their existence, they could only be defeated by the Macedonian troops of Philip II and his son Alexander the Great at the battle of Chaeronea, in which they stood firm when the rest of the Theban army fled in disarray, and 250 of them died defending to his city and to all iceland.
They say that Philip of Macedonia before the corpses piled up in a pile and, knowing who they were, he exclaimed:«Perish the man who suspects that these men either suffered or did something inappropriately».