I hope you enjoyed this story and will please forgive me a moment of indulgence. I want to explain the inspiration for this story, and how it came to be. The real life story of the Sacred Band of Thebes.

I first came across the story in Athens in 2017. On a family holiday where my son and I were determined to see everything related to the Percy Jackson and the Greek gods. At the Acropolis museum, I came across a book talking about Eros. In there it discussed love between gods and mortals, the women of Lesbos, incidences of homosexuality in Greek life and the roles of erastes and eromenos in society. I started to get a germ of an idea. I read about how when men came of age, they either courted girls or went into the army. Some armies, like the Spartan armies, would turn a blind eye to their soldiers copulating without their wives there. Thebes went one better, and made their most elite squadron one made exclusively of homosexual couples. The theory being that, if a man were fighting on the battlefield with his lover, he was going to be the fiercest, strongest, most ruthless soldier on the battlefield.

The band was first formed in 371 BC by Gorgidas (according to most records, some claim Epaminondas formed the band) after they defeated Sparta at the battle of Leuctra. There are earlier records of similar Theban armies, but none titled the Sacred Band before this date.

The soldiers were selected for their ability and merit, and were paired together by vow (though unlike in my story, it was at the shrine of Iolaus, a former lover of Hercules – this is according to Plutarch at least) using the structure of pederastry – an older erastes and a younger eromenos. Most soldiers joined at around the age of 20/21 after training in regular barracks. They typically left at the age of 30.

They changed the way most Greek armies fought at the time. Typically, an army would place their strongest fighters on the right of the troops. This meant their weakest members might take out a few of the enemies stronger players, but also wore them down by the time the strongest of the two armies met. The Thebans placed the Sacred Band to the left, meaning their strongest soldiers met their enemies strongest soldiers head on. This was a good psychological tactic, as the enemy would believe they were the weakest infantry and be afraid of what was to come. It also meant the Sacred Band didn't tire before they had beaten the strongest of their rivals. In this way, and using other inventive military ideas, the Sacred Band were undefeated, and took on other armies greater in number than theirs – they had famously annihilated Sparta in combat twice despite being outnumbered at least two-to-one.

Thebes was already a rich and prosperous city, and the envy of Athens and Sparta as well as other smaller towns. But the defense of the citadel by the army, and in particular the Sacred Band, meant that for years they were able to continue growing the economy and growing richer, though this only added to the contempt of the rest of Greece.

The Theban army, and the Sacred Band, lasted until 338BC at the battle of Chaeronea (the battle I made the subject of Chapter 7). Macedonia envied Greece and wanted to invade. Fear of Philip II of Macedon and his son, Alexander the Capable (later known as Alexander the Great) had made the previously warring cities of Greece unite, and the Theban army marched with the Athenian infantry to meet the invaders. Some sources say the Sacred Band were surrounded and defeated despite fighting to the end, others say the Macedonian cavalry attacked them in the dead of night. Either way, all the band fell at the hands of Alexander. When Philip II surveyed the battlefield and came across the remains of the band and realised who they were, that his army had defeated the invincible band (as they were known throughout Greece and the surrounding countries) it's said that he broke down and wept for their loss, acknowledging their bravery and tenacity.

Soon after the battle, the previously impenetrable city of Thebes was overwhelmed and razed to the ground, but not before a lion statue was erected in their honour, though only 135 of the 150 couples were inscribed on it.

With its strong ties to legends like Perseus and Hercules, for a long time historians didn't think Thebes was a real town. It was only in the early 1800's when they discovered the lion statue that they discovered it had been a real place and that some of the histories of Thebes were fact and not fiction, though with changing attitudes to homosexuality, some historians still doubt the connection between the hoplites of the Sacred Band. A lot of the historical sources still available were written by Athenian and Spartan scribes and as such have a lot of prejudice around them, so skew the details.

Because of this, it is actually hard to find a lot of concrete evidence about the Sacred Band, and so beyond the basic facts I absorbed, I tried to piece together life from my experience in Athens, the histories and myths and legends I had known since I was taught in school as a kid, media accounts that are available and whatever other sources I could find including the Iliad and the Odyssey.

This story completely absorbed me to write it, merging my love of Ancient Greece and my excitement on discovering this way of life in that era and the wonderfulness of Dean and Castiel. I know I've used a lot of lexicon from the times so below am providing a glossary of terms for some of the Greek I have used – my spellcheck is about to hate me as much as it has for the entire rest of the story now!

Glossary of terms:

Erastes: the older man in a pederastry or same sex pairing. Erastes roughly translates as 'the lover'.

Eromenos: the younger man in a pederastry or same sex pairing. Eromenos roughly translates to 'the beloved'.

Pederastry: the act of an older man training an adolescent boy in athletics and fighting skills. Progress was rewards with gifts, and with physical rewards. Physical contact depended mostly on the erastes inclinations, but never reached the stage of penetration.

Sacred Band of Thebes: An army totalling approximately 300 men, or 150 pairs of lovers. The most elite warriors that Thebes had to offer. They altered warfare protocol, and the strength of their connection and having their lover on the battlefield with them made them more ferocious and deadly in war.

Xiphos: A sword with a curved, almost leaf-like appearance. The blade was short, and used secondary to the spear on the battlefield.

Akratos; Barley bread dipped in wine, a typical breakfast food, sometimes served with figs or olives.

Linothorax: the typical army outfit for a hoplite from the classical and hellenistic eras of Ancient Greece.

Xynomizithra: a sour cheese. Originally from Crete. Not going to lie, I had this in Athens and don't know if it's a traditional or recent thing but it was gorgeous so it gets mentioned anyway.

Obolus: a silver coin placed under the tongue to pay Charon for passage across the river Styx and into the underworld.