The Sacred Band of Thebes

I unwittingly fell unto this while researching into Classical Greek stuff.

And if there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their loves, 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. 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. Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger?

From Plato's Symposium

The Sacred Band originally was formed of picked men in couples, each lover and beloved selected from the ranks of the existing Theban citizen-army. The pairs consisted of the older "heniochoi", or charioteers, and the younger "paraibatai", or companions, who were all housed and trained at the city's expense and fought as hoplites. During their early engagements, in an attempt to bolster general morale, they were dispersed by Gorgidas throughout the front ranks of the Theban army.

But was there ever an invincible army?

Defeat came at the Battle of Chaeronea (338 BC), the decisive contest in which Philip II of Macedon, with his son Alexander, extinguished the Theban hegemony. The traditional hoplite infantry was no match for the novel long-speared Macedonian phalanx: the Theban army and its allies broke and fled, but the Sacred Band, although surrounded and overwhelmed, refused to surrender. James G. DeVoto says in The Theban Sacred Band that Alexander had deployed his cavalry behind the Macedonian hoplites, apparently permitting "a Theban break-through in order to effect a cavalry assault while his hoplites regrouped." The Thebans of the Sacred Band held their ground and nearly all 300 fell where they stood beside their last commander, Theagenes. Plutarch records that Philip II, on encountering the corpses "heaped one upon another", understanding who they were, exclaimed,

Perish any man who suspects that these men either did or suffered anything unseemly.

300 SPARTA! Much?