Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of the Ancient Warfare podcast.

Today, I shall be your host.

I'm Murray Dam.

I'm the assistant editor of the magazine, Ancient Warfare Magazine.

And don't forget that you can follow us on Patreon.

You can support us.

And today I've got Mark McCaffrey joining us and a special guest, James Rom.

And we're going to be discussing James's new book, which is out in four days' time, I think.

The Sacred Band, 300 Theban lovers fighting to save Greek freedom.

Welcome, James.

Now, I was going to say the question I don't need to ask is why the sacred band because as ancient

military historians we in a way have been waiting for a book on the sacred band for such a

long time because it hasn't been focused upon you know we live in a a spartan-centric modern

ancient world does that make yes that makes sense and so the The Sacred Band, a Pamanondas, and, you know, the Theban 300 is certainly

something that has neglected, I think, in popular media and even scholarly media.

So how long has this been in Genesis in your mind and work?

I started the project about six years ago.

You're very right to say that this is not a very widely covered topic.

It's partly the result of the lack of evidence because Xenophon, who's our primary source for this

period, was a huge Sparta file.

And he hated the Thebans for their defeat of Sparta at Luxtra and other confrontations.

And he did his best to obscure the achievements of Thebes, including the sacred

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