THEBES, an ancient Greek city in Boeotia (anciently saiii3ac Thebae), is situated on low hilly ground a little north of the Asopus valley, overlooking the Ismenian plain, about 44 m. from Athens, whence it is reached by two carriage-roads and by rail way. It has about 4,800 inhabitants, and is the seat of a bishop. The present town occupies the site of the ancient citadel, the Cadmea; two fragments of ancient wall are visible on the N. and another, belonging either to the citadel or the outer wall, on the S. There are remains of a Minoan "palace," and chamber-tombs. The church of St. Luke, south-east of the Cadmea, is believed to contain his tomb. Two streams, rising a little south of the town, flow on the two sides, the ancient Ismenus on the east and Dirce A(ni)Kp on the west. The "waters" of Thebes are celebrated by Pindar and the Athenian poets, and the site is still, as described by Dicaearchus (3rd century B.c.), "all springs," KILOvapos racra. From the abundance of water the neighbouring plain is extremely fertile. But the population is scanty, and the town unimportant.
History.—The record of the earliest days of Thebes was pre served in a mass of legends. Five main cycles of story may be distinguished : the foundation of the citadel Cadmeia by Cadmus; (2) the building of a "seven-gated" wall by Amphion, and the cognate stories; (3) the tale of the "house of Laius," cul minating in the adventures of Oedipus and the wars of the "Seven" and the Epigoni ; (4) the advent of Dionysus; and (5) the exploits of Heracles. It is difficult to extract any historical fact out of this maze of myths; at most it seems safe to infer that it was one of the first Greek fortified cities.
In the period of great invasions from the north Thebes received settlers of that stock which spread over Boeotia. The military security of the city tended to raise it to a commanding posi tion and its inhabitants endeavoured to establish a complete su premacy over the outlying towns. In the late 6th century the Thebans were brought into hostile contact with the Athenians, who helped the small fortress of Plataea to maintain its independ ence against them. The aversion to Athens explains the attitude of Thebes during the great Persian invasion, though it should be remembered that Herodotus, our chief authority for the period, wrote this part of his history in all probability at a period when feeling between Athens and Thebes was bitter in the extreme. Though a contingent of 400 was sent to Thermopylae (48o B.c.) and remained there with Leonidas to the end, the governing aristocracy soon after joined the enemy and fought zealously on his behalf at the battle of Plataea (479 B.c.), The victorious Greeks punished Thebes by depriving it of the presidency of the Boeotian League. In 457 B.C. Sparta, needing a counterpoise against Athens in central Greece, reinstated Thebes as the dom inant power in Boeotia. The great fortress served this purpose well by holding out when the Athenians overran and occupied the rest of the country (457-447 B.O. In the Peloponnesian War (q.v.) the Thebans, embittered by the support which Athens gave to the smaller Boeotian towns, and especially to Plataea, were firm allies of Sparta, which helped them to besiege Plataea and al lowed them to destroy the town after capture (427 B.c.). In 424 B.C. at the head of the Boeotian levy, they inflicted a severe de feat upon an invading force of Athenians at Delium. After the downfall of Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian war the Thebans, finding that Sparta intended to protect the states which they desired to annex, broke off the alliance. In 404 B.C. they
had urged the complete destruction of Athens, in 403 B.C. they secretly supported the restoration of its democracy in order to find in it a counterpoise against Sparta. A few years later, they forced on the so-called Corinthian War and formed the nucleus of the league against Sparta. The result of the war was disastrous to Thebes as the settlement of 387 B.c. stipulated the autonomy of all Greek towns and so withdrew the other Boeotians from its political control. Its power was further curtailed in 382 B.C., when a Spartan force occupied the citadel by a treacherous coup de-main. Three years later the Spartan garrison was expelled; in the consequent wars with Sparta the Theban army, trained and led by Epameinondas and Pelopidas (qq.v.), proved itself the best in Greece. Some years of desultory fighting culminated in 371 B.C. in a victory over the Spartans at Leuctra (q.v.). The winners carried their arms into Peloponnesus and at the head of a large coalition permanently crippled the power of Sparta. But the predominance of Thebes was short-lived. The states which she protected were indisposed to commit themselves per manently to her tutelage, and the renewed rivalry of Athens pre vented the formation of a Theban empire. With the death of Epameinondas in 362 B.C. the city sank again to the position of a secondary power. In a war with Phocis (356-346 B.c.) it could not even maintain its predominance in central Greece, and by inviting Philip II. of Macedon to crush the Phocians it extended that monarch's power within dangerous proximity to its frontiers. In 338 B.C. the orator Demosthenes persuaded Thebes to join Athens in a final attempt to bar Philip's advance upon Attica. The Theban contingent fought bravely in the decisive battle of Chaeroneia (q.v.). Philip was content to deprive Thebes of her dominion over Boeotia; but a revolt against Alexander was pun ished by the complete destruction of the city. Thebes never again played a prominent part in history. It suffered from the estab lishment of Chalcis as the chief fortress of central Greece, and was severely handled by the Roman conquerors Mummius and Sulla. In Pausanias's time (A.D. 17o) its citadel alone was in habited. During the Byzantine period it served as a place of refuge against foreign invaders, and from the loth century became a centre of the new silk trade. In 1311 it was destroyed by the Catalans and passed out of history.
The most famous monument of ancient Thebes was the outer wall with its seven gates, which even as late as the 6th century B.C. was probably the largest of artificial Greek fortresses. Two of the springs have been identified with some probability—that of St. Theodore with the Oedipodeia, in which Oedipus is said to have purged himself from the pollution of homicide, and the Para porti with the dragon-guarded fountain of Ares (see CADMUS). From the interest of the site in history and still more in litera ture, as the scene of so many dramas, the temptation to fix de tails has been specially strong. There are two main difficulties to contend with. The description of Pausanias was written at a time when the lower city was deserted, and only the temples and the gates left ; and the references to Thebes in the Attic dramatists are, like those to Mycenae and Argos, of no topographical value.