He acknowledges, however, that Plato may have simply put the hypothesis in the mouth of Phaedrus according to the supposed earlier dramatic date of the work (c. Dover argues Plato wrote his Symposium first since Plato's Phaedrus uses language that implies that the organization does not yet exist. However, it is the speech of the character Phaedrus in Plato's Symposium referring to an "army of lovers" that is most famously connected with the Sacred Band even though it does not technically refer to the Sacred Band, since the army referred to is hypothetical. According to the British classical scholar Sir Kenneth Dover, this was a clear allusion to the Sacred Band, reflecting Xenophon's contemporary, albeit anachronistic, awareness of the Theban practice, as the dramatic date of the work itself is c. Xenophon's Socrates in his Symposium disapprovingly mentions the practice of placing lovers beside each other in battle in the city-states of Thebes and Elis, arguing that while the practice was acceptable to them, it was shameful for Athenians.
In the old debate surrounding Xenophon's and Plato's works, the Sacred Band has figured prominently as a possible way of dating which of the two wrote their version of Symposium first. Historian John Kinloch Anderson believes that the Sacred Band was indeed present in Delium, and that Gorgidas did not establish it, but merely reformed it. Though none of these mention the Sacred Band by name, these may have referred to the Sacred Band or at least its precursors. Diodorus also records 300 picked men ( ἄνδρες ἐπίλεκτοι) present in the Battle of Delium (424 BC), composed of heníochoi ( ἡνίοχοι, " charioteers") and parabátai ( παραβάται, "those who walk beside"). Herodotus describes them as "the first and the finest" ( πρῶτοι καὶ ἄριστοι) among Thebans. 460–395 BC) both record an elite force of 300 Thebans allied with the Persians, who were annihilated by Athenians in the Battle of Plataea (479 BC). Herodotus (c.484–425 BC) and Thucydides (c. Prior to this, there were references to elite Theban forces also numbering 300. The generally accepted date of the Sacred Band's creation is between 379 and 378 BC. 424–347 BC) and the similarly titled Symposium by his rival Xenophon (c. The exact date of the Sacred Band's creation, and whether it was created before or after the Symposium of Plato (c. 290–230 BC), and Athenaeus of Naucratis (c. The 2nd century AD Macedonian author Polyaenus in his Stratagems in War also records Gorgidas as the founder of the Sacred Band. He records that the Sacred Band was originally formed by the boeotarch Gorgidas, shortly after the expulsion of the Spartan garrison occupying the Theban citadel of Cadmea. Plutarch (46–120 AD), a native of the village of Chaeronea, is the source of the most substantial surviving account of the Sacred Band.
Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger? For what lover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this. And if there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their beloved, they would be the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonour, and emulating one another in honour and when fighting at each other's side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world.
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