Elite Units of the Ancient World

[Sarmatian]

I'm going to have to go with the Band. From what I read, they had one of the strongest emotional attachments any fighting unit has had. Composed of gay lovers, each man fought for each other.

At least, thats what I've read.

It doesn't mean that they were all gay. Concept of pederasty in Ancient Greece was more an emotional relationship between two men (one older, mature in his 30-ies and one younger, adolescent between 16-20). Sometimes that relationship involved sex but often it was strictly platonic, more resembling brotherly love.

It is a bit complicated. In modern western civilization it is inappropriate to say that a man loves another man, unless they are very closely blood related (ie father-son or brothers). In modern time, love between two men implies often homosexual relationship, while in ancient Greece it was quite normal for two men to say that they love each other in a totally platonic way. So, pederasty was employed in many aspects in Greek city states, often in the military, like the Sacred Band we're talking about. That implied that in the unit men were emotionally connected, they cared deeply for one another but certainly not all had sex with each other.

It is still not clear in how many polises pederasty involved sexual component and what's the basis for it. Some historians say that it was used as some way of "birth control", where mature men could vent their sexual desires without the danger of overpopulation, while others think it was the specific nature of polises (relatively small communities with limited contact with everything outside) that formed those close bonds between man. Also it probably had some important aspects in military training as mature men were supposed to teach younger how to fight. Two men who know each other and love each other and have trained with each other for an extended period of time definitly makes them very lethal on the battlefield.

Also it was often considered that younger man shouldn't have any pleasure from sex cause he was always passive during intercourse, ie he was taking the role of woman in the act. If he was getting pleasure, he was losing his manhood, so to speak. But then again, there are paintings on Greek vases which show older men stimulating the genital area of their younger lovers which clearly implies that they were trying to give them pleasure. As I said it differed from polis to polis from period to period. IIIRC, in Sparta pederasty was strictly non-sexual...