Seven soldierly rows.

[**The following takes place during the Battle of Chaeronea.**] >After a last desperate struggle the entire allied [**Greek**] army broke and fled – with the exception of the Sacred Band. Like Leonidas’ Spartans at Thermopylae, these 300 Thebans fought and died where they stood, as though on parade, amid piles of corpses. Only forty-six of them were taken alive. The remaining 254 were buried on the site of their last heroic stand. There they lie to this day, in seven soldierly rows, as the excavator’s spade revealed them; and close by their common grave the Lion of Chaeronea still stands guard, weathered and brooding, over that melancholy plain. ____________________________ **Source:** Green, Peter. “From a View to a Death.” Alexander of Macedon: 356-323 B.C.: A Historical Biography. Univ. of California Press, 2005. 76. Print. **Original Source(s) Listed:** Diod. 16.86.1-5. Plut. *Alex*. 9.2, *Demosth*. 20-21, *Moral*. 845F. Polyaenus 4.2.2, 4.2.7-8. Hammond *ut supr*. N. 75 *passim*. W. K. Pritchett, ‘Notes on Chaeronea’, *AJA*, 62 (1958), 307-11, with pls. 80-81. ___________________________ **Further Reading:** [Ἱερὸς Λόχος (Sacred Band of Thebes)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_Band_of_Thebes) [Battle of Chaeronea (388 BCE)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Chaeronea_(338_BC/))