#chaeronea

The monument was found in pieces, and restored to its full height in the early 20th century. The lion is one of the oldest standing war memorials of Greece.

This lion commemorates the defeat of Thebes by Philip II of Macedon in 338 BCE at the Battle of Chaeronea. This monument (a modern reconstruction; parts of the original reside in the British Museum and the Louvre) sits atop the site of a fourth-century mass grave, believed to be the fallen of the Sacred Band of Thebes.

“Others might find the story interesting for different reasons. Not the least of these is that the Band was composed entirely of lovers: precisely a hundred and fifty couples, whose valor, so the Greeks thought, was due to the fact that no man would ever exhibit cowardice or act dishonorably in front of his beloved. In Plato’s Symposium, a dialogue about love, a character remarks that an army made up of such lovers would “conquer all mankind.””

This unit, comprised of 150 pairs of lovers, fought bravely in every engagement it participated in until it was practically exterminated at the Battle of Chaeronea (338 BCE), which brought Philip II of Macedon, and his son - known to history as Alexander the Great - to undisputed primacy in Greece.

The monument was found in pieces, and restored to its full height in the early 20th century. The lion is one of the oldest standing war memorials of Greece.

The monument was found in pieces, and restored to its full height in the early 20th century. The lion is one of the oldest standing war memorials of Greece.

The lion symbolizes the heroism of the soldiers of Thebes, which had been acknowledged even by Philip II himself. The statue was found in 1818, in five pieces, which were reconstructed and placed on a 3 meter tall pedestal next to the Archaeological Museum of Chaeronea.