Thebes Sentence Examples

The grandeur of Thebes was a vulgar grandeur.

Thebes was forced to surrender and razed to the ground.

Thebes, after the defeat by Athens about 507 B.C., appealed to Aegina for assistance.

When her father, on discovering that Iocaste, the mother of his children, was also his own mother, put his eyes out and resigned the throne of Thebes, she accompanied him into exile at Colonus.

In the Leiden museum there are a number of papyri which were found in a tomb at Thebes, written probably in the 3rd century A.D., though their matter is older.

The best known of these is that of Dryoscephalae, which must then, as slow, have been the direct route from Athens to Thebes.

Four years later Thebes used her new predominance in central Greece to restore the Trachinians, who retained Heraclea until 37 1, when Jason of Pherae seized and dismantled it.

They received assistance from Sparta in 380, but were afterwards compelled to submit to the growing power of Thebes.

The chief religious festival of Thebes was that of "Southern Opi," the ancient name of Luxor.

Both Baal and Astarte were venerated in Egypt at Thebes and Memphis in the XIXth Dynasty, and the former, through the influence of the Aramaeans who borrowed the Babylonian spelling Bel, ultimately became known as the Greek Belos who was identified with Zeus.

The German Archaeological Institute, founded in 1874, has carried out excavations at Thebes, Lesbos, Paros, Athens and elsewhere; it has also been associated in the great researches at Olympia, Pergamum and Troy, and in many other important undertakings.

But a spirit of harmony and energy now breathed within the nation, and in the ensuing wars Athens worsted powerful enemies like Thebes and Chalcis (506).

In the wars of the period Athens took a prominent part with a view to upholding the balance of power, joining the Corinthian League in 395, and assisting Thebes against Sparta after 378, Sparta against Thebes after 369.

At Thebes, New York has also carried out work at Qurnet Murra`i and Sheikh `Abd el Qurna, as well as at Dra t Abul Neqqa and Deir el Bahri, 55 where the Earl of Carnarvon, assisted by Mr. Howard Carter, has also dug with remarkable success, recovering some of the most beautiful relics of the art of the XII.

Burckhardt, he was sent at Salt's charges to Thebes, whence he removed with great skill the colossal bust of Rameses II., commonly called Young Memnon, which he shipped for England, where it is in the British Museum.

In 1829 his widow published his drawings of the royal tombs at Thebes.

At Thebes she was worshipped as Athena Onka or Onga, of equally uncertain derivation (possibly from 6yKos, " a height").

Her body was cast into a spring near Thebes, which was ever afterwards called by her name.

Burmeister regards the legend as an incident in the struggle between the followers of Dionysus and Apollo in Thebes, in which the former were defeated and driven back to Lydia.

The other bears the record of a second expedition to the same land of Punt, undertaken by command of Queen Hatshepsut, 1600 B.C. It is preserved in the vividly chiselled and richly coloured decorations portraying the history of the reign of this famous Pharaoh on the walls of the "Stage Temple" at Thebes.

The temple is now in ruins, but the entire series of gorgeous pictures recording the expedition to "the balsam land of Punt," from its leaving to its returning to Thebes, still remains intact and undefaced.4 These are the only authenticated instances of the export of incense trees from the Somali country until Colonel Playfair, then political agent at Aden, in 1862-1864, collected and sent to Bombay the specimens from which Sir George Birdwood prepared his descriptions of them for the Linnean Society in 1868.

At Thebes there was a statue of Fortune holding the child Plutus in her arms; at Athens he was similarly represented in the arms of Peace; at Thespiae he was represented standing beside Athena the Worker.

In Hesiod it is chiefly confined to those who fought before Troy and Thebes; in view of their supposed divine origin, he calls them demi-gods (µLO€ot).

Again, side by side with gods of superior rank, certain heroes were worshipped as protecting spirits of the country or state; such were the Aeacidae amongst the Aeginetans, Ajax son of Oileus amongst the Epizephyrian Locrians and Hector at Thebes.

He was the instigator of the famous war against Thebes for the restoration of his son-in-law Polyneices, who had been deprived of his rights by his brother Eteocles.

Adrastus, followed by Polyneices and Tydeus, his two sons-inlaw, Amphiaraus, his brother-in-law, Capaneus, Hippomedon and Parthenopaeus, marched against the city of Thebes, and on his way is said to have founded the Nemean games.

This is the expedition of the "Seven against Thebes," which the poets have made nearly as famous as the siege of Troy.

This expedition was called the war of the "Epigoni" or descendants, and ended in the taking and destruction of Thebes.

Teiresias' grave was at the Tilphusian spring; but there was a cenotaph of him at Thebes, and also in later times his "observatory," or place for watching for omens from birds, was pointed out (Pausanias ix 16; Sophocles, Antigone, 999).

Those who attended the conference were probably Athens, Chios, Mytilene, Methymna, Rhodes, Byzantium, Thebes, the latter of which joined Athens soon after the Sphodrias raid.

By this time, however, the alliance between Thebes and Athens was growing weaker, and Athens, being short of money, concluded a peace with Sparta (probably in July 374), by which the peace of Antalcidas was confirmed and the two states recognized each other as mistress of sea and land respectively.

The expedition which followed produced negative successes, but the absence of any positive success and the pressure of financial difficulty, coupled with the defection of Jason (probably before 37 1), and the high-handed action of Thebes in destroying Plataea (373), induced Athens to renew the peace with Sparta which Timotheus had broken.

The enthusiasm of the allies (numbering about seventy) waned rapidly before the financial exigencies of successive campaigns, and it is abundantly clear that Thebes had no interest save the extension of her power in Boeotia.

The first event in this period was the battle of Leuctra (July 371), in which, no doubt to the surprise of Athens, Thebes temporarily asserted itself as the chief land power in Greece.

This new coalition naturally alarmed Sparta, which at once made overtures to Athens on the ground of their common danger from Thebes.

Some success in Macedonia roused the hostility of Thebes, and the subsequent attempts on Amphipolis caused the Chalcidians to declare against the league.

In 367 Athens and Thebes sent rival ambassadors to Persia, with the result that Athens was actually ordered to abandon her claim to Amphipolis, and to remove her navy from the high seas.

Alliances with various land powers, and an inability to understand the true relations which alone could unite the league, combined to alienate the allies, who could discover no reason for the expenditure of their contributions on protecting Sparta or Corinth against Thebes.

Such legends often arise to connect towns bearing identical or similar names (such as are common in Greece) and to justify political events or ambitions by legendary precedents; and this certainly happened during the successive political rivalries of Dorian Sparta with non-Dorian Athens and Thebes.

During the three years he spent at Thebes the boy no doubt observed and learnt much.

Here he made Thebes his ally and visited the Phocians with crushing vengeance.

Thebes was induced to join Athens; so were some of the minor Peloponnesian states, and the allies took the field against Philip. This opposition was crushed by the epoch-making battle of Chaeroneia, which left Greece at Philip's feet.

He fled with Alcmene, Electryon's daughter, to Thebes, where he was cleansed from the guilt of blood by Creon, his maternal uncle, king of Thebes.

On his return to Thebes he married Alcmene, who gave birth to twin sons, Iphicles being the son of Amphitryon, Heracles of Zeus, who had visited her during Amphitryon's absence.

He fell in battle against the Minyans, against whom he had undertaken an expedition, accompanied by the youthful Heracles, to deliver Thebes from a disgraceful tribute.

In 395 the domineering attitude of Sparta impelled the Corinthians to conclude an alliance with Argos which they had previously contemplated on occasions of friction with the former city, as well as with Thebes and with Athens, whose commercial rivalry they no longer dreaded.

There also he wrote the life of St Paul of Thebes, probably an imaginary tale embodying the facts of the monkish life around him.

After the battle of Leuctra the philo-Laconian party was expelled with Mantineian help. Tegea henceforth took an active part in the revival of the Arcadian League and the prosecution of the war in alliance with Thebes against Sparta (371-362), and the ultimate defection of Mantineia confirmed it in its federalist tendencies.

This monarch had retired from Thebes and established his court on the site now known as Tel el-Amarna, where he founded the city which existed only during the brief period of thirty years ending with the death of the monarch about 1370 B.C. The date of the documents found in the royal library is, therefore, fixed within very narrow limits.

This victory enabled the Greek allies of Persia (Thebes, Athens, Argos, Corinth) to carry on the Corinthian war against Sparta, and the Spartans had to give up the war in Asia Minor.

After the battle of Leuctra, when the power of Thebes was founded by Epaminondas, Pelopidas went to Susa (367) and restored the old alliance between Persia and Thebes.

Shortly after the edict by which the king had proclaimed his alliance with Thebes, and the conditions of the general peace which he was going to impose upon Greece, his weakness became evident, for since;56 all the satraps of Asia Minor (Datames, Ariobarzanes, Mausolus, Orontes, Artabazus) were in rebellion again, in close alliance with Athens, Sparta and Egypt.

But his alleged attempts to bribe the oracles were fruitless, and his schemes were cut short by the outbreak of war with Thebes in 395.

His works on Macedonia, on Thebes, and on tactics (perhaps identical with the Strategica) are lost.

The last named distinguished himself at the conquest of Thebes (335 B.C.), and held an important command in the Indian campaigns of Alexander.

The thoroughly national character of Heracles is shown by his being the mythical ancestor of the Dorian dynastic tribe, while revered by Ionian Athens, Lelegian Opus and Aeolo-Phoenician Thebes, and closely associated with the Achaean heroes Peleus and Telamon.

His mother and her husband lived at Thebes in exile as guests of King Creon.

By freeing Thebes from paying tribute to the Minyans of Orchomenus he won Creon's daughter, Megara, to wife.

On Hercules' return to Thebes he gave his wife Megara to his friend and charioteer Iolaus, son of Iphicles, and by beating Eurytus of Oechalia and his sons in a shooting match won a claim to the hand of his daughter Iole, whose family, however, except her brother Iphitus, withheld their consent to the union.

He took part in the voyage of the Argonauts and in the chase of the Calydonian boar; but his chief fame is in connexion with the expedition of the Seven against Thebes, organized by Adrastus, the brother of his wife Eriphyle, for the purpose of restoring Polyneices to the throne.

The assault on Thebes was disastrous for the Seven; and Amphiaraus, pursued by Periclymenus, would have been slain with his spear, had not Zeus with a thunderbolt opened a chasm into which the seer, with his chariot, horses and charioteer, disappeared.

There was another temple dedicated to him on the road from Thebes to Potniae, and here was the oracle of Amphiaraus consulted by Croesus and Mardonius.

When his father set out with the expedition of the Seven against Thebes, which he knew would be fatal to him, he enjoined upon his sons to avenge his death by slaying Eriphyle and undertaking a second expedition against Thebes.

After the destruction of Thebes by the Epigoni, Alcmaeon carried out his father's injunctions by killing his mother, as a punishment for which he was driven mad and pursued by the Erinyes from place to place.

After his death Alcmaeon was worshipped at Thebes; his tomb was at Psophis in a grove of cypresses.

A small harp of this kind having 20 strings was discovered at Thebes in 1823.

Although some of the Greek writers made Busiris an Egyptian king and a successor of Menes, about the sixtieth of the series, and the builder of Thebes, those better informed by the Egyptians rejected him altogether.

It sank eventually into a mere political tool in the hands first of Thebes, and then under Philip of Macedonia."

The pyramid-fields of Memphis and Sakkara, and the necropolis of Meydum, and those of Abydos and Thebes were examined; the great temples of Dendera and Edfu were disinterred; important excavations were carried out at Karnak, Medinet-Habu and Deir el-Bahri; Tanis (the Zoan of the Bible) was partially explored in the Delta; and even Gebel Barkal in the Sudan.

Within this territory the low ridge of Teumessus separates the plain of Ismenus and Dirce, commanded by the citadel of Thebes, from the upland plain of the Asopus, the only Boeotian river that finds the eastern sea.

Of the two great centres of legends, Thebes with its Cadmean population figures as a military stronghold, and Orchomenus, the home of the Minyae, as an enterprising commercial city.

In historical times the leading city of Boeotia was Thebes, whose central position and military strength made it a suitable capital.

About 519 the resistance of Plataea to the federating policy of Thebes led to the interference of Athens on behalf of the former; on this occasion, and again in 507, the Athenians defeated the Boeotian levy.

During the Persian invasion of 480, while some of the cities fought whole-heartedly in the ranks of the patriots, Thebes assisted the invaders.

For a time the presidency of the Boeotian League was taken away from Thebes, but in 457 the Spartans reinstated that city as a bulwark against Athenian aggression.

About this time the Boeotian League comprised eleven groups of sovereign cities and associated townships, each of which elected one Boeotarch or minister of war and foreign affairs, contributed sixty delegates to the federal council at Thebes, and supplied a contingent of about a thousand foot and a hundred horse to the federal army.

Boeotian contingents fought in all the campaigns of Epaminondas, and in the later wars against Phocis (356-346); while in the dealings with Philip of Macedon the federal cities appear merely as the tools of Thebes.

The destruction of Thebes by Alexander (335) seems to have paralysed the political energy of the Boeotians, though it led to an improvement in the federal constitution, by which each city received an equal vote.

According to some accounts, Philolaus, obliged to flee, took refuge first in Lucania and then at Thebes, where he had as pupils Simmias and Cebes, who subsequently, being still young men (vcavifKoL), were present at the death of Socrates.

Thebes was never a walled city in this sense, though its vast temple enclosures in different quarters would form as many fortresses in case of siege or tumult.

In non-literary Greek Thebes was regularly called Diospolis the Great.

Mont also was a local deity and Hathor presided over the western cliffs of Thebes.

After the end of the Old Kingdom Thebes grew from an obscure provincial town to be the seat of a strong line of princes who contended for supremacy with Heracleopolis and eventually triumphed in the XIth Dynasty of Manetho.

The most important monument of the Middle Kingdom now extant at Thebes is the funerary temple of Menthotp III.

The chief energies of this king in fact were expended on developing the south extremity of Thebes on both banks.

After this Thebes experienced a serious set-back with the heresy of Akhenaton, the son of Amenophis III.

He moved his capital northward to Akhetaton (El Amarna) and strove to suppress the worship of Ammon, doing infinite damage to the monuments of Thebes by defacing his name and figure.

After about twenty years, however, the reaction came, Thebes was again the capital, and a little later under Seti (Sethos) I.

Under the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties Thebes was at the height of its greatness.

Hitherto Thebes had been glorified by the process, but henceforth it was rather to perish.

For several centuries after the fall of the New Empire Thebes was but one of several alternating or contemporaneous capitals.

Memphis, Tanis, Bubastis, Sais, Heracleopolis had at one time or another at least equal claims. The Ethiopian conquerors of Egypt made Thebes their Egyptian capital, but in 668 Assur-bani-pal sacked the city.

Probably every king that included Thebes in his realm, except the Assyrians and the Persians, left his memorial there in chapels erected or sculptures added.

Of the Persians, however, not even Darius is traceable at Thebes; on the other hand, there is no support for the tradition that Cambyses destroyed its monuments.

For a short period in the reign of Epiphanes, when Upper Egypt was in rebellion against the Ptolemaic rule, Thebes was the capital of independent native.

In a later rebellion, Thebes was captured after a three years' siege and severely punished by Lathyrus (Ptolemy X., Soter II.).

Though its vast buildings have since served as quarries for mill-stones and for the limeburner, Thebes still offers the greatest assemblage of monumental ruins in the world.

Having been bribed by Polyneices with the necklace of Harmonia, she persuaded her husband to take part in the expedition of the Seven against Thebes, although he knew it would prove fatal to him.

The attack on Thebes was repulsed, and during the flight the earth opened and swallowed up Amphiaraus together with his chariot.

He also gave help to Sparta against Thebes, sending Gaulish and Iberian mercenaries to take part in Greek warfare.

Before anything could come of this proposal, matters were precipitated (end of March 431) by the attack of Thebes upon Plataea (q.v.), which immediately sought and obtained the aid of Athens.

In 429 the Peloponnesians were deterred by the plague from invading Attica and laid siege to Plataea in the interests of Thebes.

The scheme, which probably originated with the atticizing party in Thebes, resulted in the severe defeat of Hippocrates at Delium by the Boeotians under Pagondas, and was a final blow to the policy of an Athenian land empire.

He was, to begin with, the local deity of Thebes, when it was an unimportant town on the east bank of the river, about the region now occupied by the temple of Karnak.

The XIth dynasty sprang from a family in the Hermonthite nome or perhaps at Thebes itself, and adorned the temple of Karnak with statues.

After the XXth dynasty the centre of power was removed from Thebes, and the authority of Ammon began to wane.

Thebes was at first their Egyptian capital, and they honoured Ammon greatly, although their wealth and culture were not sufficient to effect much.

Between Thebes and Khartum the western banks of the Nile are composed of Nubian Sandstone, which extends westward from the river to the edge of the great Libyan Desert, where it forms the bed rock.

Luxor (q.v.), pop. (with Karnak) 25,229, marks the site of Thebes.

The site of Thebes has already been indicated.

Farther south are the stupendous ruins of Thebes on both sides of the river, the temple of Esna, the ruins and tombs of El Kab, the temple of Edfu, the quarries of Silsila and the temple of Ombos, followed by the inscribed rocks of the First Cataract, the tombs and quarries of Assuan and the temples of Philae.

Egypt to the south of the Heptanomis war the Thebais, called P-tesh-en-Ne, the province of Thebes, as early as the XXVIth Dynasty.

Thus Ammon, originally the obscure local god of Thebes, was raised by the Theban monarchs of the XIIth and of the XVIIIth to XXIst Dynasties to a predominant position never equalled by any other divinity; and, by similar means, Suchos of the Fayum, IJbasti of Bubastis, and Neith of Sais, each enjoyed for a short space of time a consideration that no other cause would have secured to them.

Amenophis began his reign in Thebes as an adherent of the traditional faith, but after a few years he abandoned that town and built a new capital for his god Aton 200 m.

Not sixty years after the accession of Akhenaton, his city was abandoned, its rulers branded as heretics, and the old religion restored in Thebes as completely as if the Aton.

He also built the simple and dignified temple of Medinet Habu at Thebes, which was afterward overshadowed by the grandiose work of Rameses III.

The Ethiopian (XXVth) dynasty built mainly in their capital under Mount Barkal, and Shabako and Tirhaka (Tahrak) also left chapels and a pylon at Thebes; and the latter added a great colonnade leading up to the temple of Karnak, of which one column is still standing.

It is probable that certain rudely chipped flints, so-called eoliths, in the alluvial gravels (formed generally at the mouth of wadis opening on to the Nile) at Thebes and elsewhere, are the work of primitive man; but it has been shown that such are produced also by natural forces in the rush of torrents.

Later the princes of Thebes asserted their independence and founded the XIth Dynasty, which pushed its frontiers northwards until finally it occupied the whole country.

Its kings were named Menthotp, from Mont, one of the gods of Thebes; others, perhaps sub-kings, were named Enyotf (Antef).

They were buried at Thebes, whence the coffins of several were obtained by the early collectors of the I9th century.

The XIIth Dynasty is the central point of the Middile Kingdom, to which the decline of the Memphite and the rise of the Heracleopolite dynasty mark the transition, while the growth of Thebes under the XIth Dynasty is its true starting-point.

He had to fight for his throne and then reorganize the country, removing his capital or residence from Thebes to a central situation.

Amongst the kings of the XIIIth Dynasty (including perhaps the XIVth), not a few are represented by granite statues of colossal size and fine workmanship, especially at Thebes and Tanis, some by architectural fragments, some by graffiti on the rocks about the First Cataract.

The XVIIth Dynasty probably began the struggle, at first as semi-independent kinglets at Thebes.

One of the first acts of the new king was to lead an army into Syria, where revolt was again rife; he reached and perhaps crossed the Euphrates and returned home to Thebes with seven captive kings of Tikhsi and much spoil.

His son Amenophis III., C. 1400 u.c., was a mighty builder, especially at Thebes, where his reign marks a new epoch in the history of the great temples, Luxor being his creation, while avenues of rams, pylons, &c., were added on a vast scale to Karnak.

The colossi known to the Greeks by the name of the Homeric hero Memnon, which look over the western plain of Thebes, represent this king and were placed before the entrance of his funerary temple, the rest of which has disappeared.

He changed his own name from Amenhotp, Ammon is satisfied, to Akhenaton, pious to Aton, erased the name and figure of Ammon from the monuments, even where it occurred as part of his own fathers name, abandoned Thebes, the magnificent city of Ammon, and built a new capital at El Amarna in the plain of Hermopolis, on a virgin site upon the edge of the desert.

Apparently most of the fighting was finished by the fifth year of his reign; in his mortuary temple at Thebes he set up a stela of that date recording a great victory over the Libyan immigrants and invaders, which rendered the much harried land of Egypt safe.

His palace was at Medinet Habu on the west bank of Thebes in the south quarter; and here he built a great temple to Ammon, adorned with scenes from his victories and richly provided with divine offerings.

Hrihor, the high priest in his The reign, gradually gathered into his own hands all real Deftaic power, and succeeded him at Thebes, c. 1100 B.C.,

The Tanite line of kings generally had the overlordship of the high priests of Thebes; the descendants of Hrihor, however, sometimes by marriage with princesses of the other line, could assume cartouches and royal titles, and in some cases perhaps ruled the whole of Egypt.

Sheshonk secured Thebes, making one of his sons high priest of Ammon, and whereas Solomon appears to have dealt with a king of Egypt on something like an equal footing, Sheshonk re-established Egyptian rule in Palestine and Nubia, and his expedition in the fifth year of Rehoboam subdued Israel as well as Judah, to judge by the list of city names which he inscribed on the wall of the temple of Karnak.

But in 661 (?) Assur-bani-pal drove the Ethiopian out of Lower Egypt, pursued him up the Nile and sacked Thebes.

Lydia, and aided by lonian and Carian mercenaries, extended and consolidated his power.i By the ninth year of his reign he was in full possession of Thebes.

No serious effort was made to extend the Ptolemaic rule into Ethiopia, and Ergamenes, the Hellenizing king of Ethiopia, was evidently in alliance with Philopator; in the next reign two native kings, probably supported by Ethiopia, reigned in succession at Thebes.

In 1824 a native rebellion of a religious character broke out in Upper Egypt headed by one Al3mad, an inhabitant of EsSalimiya, a village situated a few miles above Thebes.

George was sent to Corinth at the end of 1147 and despatched an army inland which plundered Thebes.

We know, however, that the vizier of Upper Egypt (at Thebes) in the eighteenth dynasty, had 40 (not 42) parchment rolls laid before him as he sat in the hall of audience.

A fresco bearing the figure of a woman holding lilies and a vase was also found in the " Palace of Cadmus " at Thebes (1916), where many Early Mycenaean graves were also excavated.

A temple built of sun-dried brick and timber has been found at Thebes underlying an archaic temple of Ismenian Apollo and standing on Mycenaean tombs (Keramopoullos, 1916), and a more extensive settlement was found at Thermon in Aetolia (Romaios, 1911-3).

A statue and grave were to be seen in Thebes.

Kharga is usually identified with the city of Oasis mentioned by Herodotus as being seven days' journey from Thebes and called in Greek the Island of the Blessed.

Thus in the example of syllogism given above, " border-war between Thebes and Athens " is the minor term, " evil " the major term, and " border-war " the middle term.

It may probably have originated in religious associations, but the guiding power throughout was the imperial policy of Thebes, especially during its short-lived supremacy after 379 B.C.

The 4th century Arcadian league, which was no doubt a revival of an older federation, was the result of the struggle for supremacy between Thebes and Sparta.

The priestesses were called doves (7r XEtac) and Herodotus tells a story which he learned at Egyptian Thebes, that the oracle of Dodona was founded by an Egyptian priestess who was carried away by the Phoenicians, but says that the local legend substitutes for this priestess a black dove, a substitution in which he tries to find a rational meaning.

Tydeus took part in the expedition of the "Seven against Thebes," in which, although small of stature, he greatly distinguished himself.

It was by his edition of these speeches from the papyri discovered at Thebes (Egypt) in 1847 and 1856 that Babington's fame as a Greek scholar was made.

The cow met him in Phocis, and guided him to Boeotia, where he founded the city of Thebes.

It was said that he was planning a campaign in the interior, or even an attack on Artaxerxes himself, when he was recalled to Greece owing to the war between Sparta and the combined forces of Athens, Thebes, Corinth, Argos and several minor states.

When war broke out afresh with Thebes the king twice invaded Boeotia (37 8, 377), and it was on his advice that Cleombrotus was ordered to march against.

The worst trait in his character is his implacable hatred of Thebes, which led directly to the battle of Leuctra and Sparta's fall from her position of supremacy.

Thebes (anciently 00ac, Thebae, or in poetry sometimes 07' 7 0a, in modern Greek Phiva, or, according to the corrected pronunciation, Thivae), an ancient Greek city in Boeotia, is situated on low hilly ground of gentle slope a little north of the range of Cithaeron, which divides Boeotia from Attica, and on the edge of the Boeotian plain, about 44 m.

The "waters" of Thebes are celebrated both by Pindar and by the Athenian poets, and the site is still, as described by Dicaearchus (3rd century B.e.), "all springs," KhOvapos ' ra g a.

It is difficult to extract any historical fact out of this maze of myths; the various groups cannot be fully co-ordinated, and a further perplexing feature is the neglect of Thebes in the Homeric poems. At most it seems safe to infer that it was one of the first Greek communities to be drawn together within a fortified city, that it owed its importance in prehistoric as in later days to its military strength, and that its original "Cadmean" population was distinct from other inhabitants of Boeotia such as the Minyae of Orchomenus.

In the period of great invasions from the north Thebes received settlers of that stock which in historical times was homogeneously spread over Boeotia.

No details of the earlier history of Thebes have been preserved, except that it was governed by a land-holding aristocracy who safeguarded their integrity by rigid statutes about the ownership of property and its transmission.

The aversion to Athens best serves to explain the unpatriotic attitude which Thebes displayed during the great Persian invasion.

The victorious Greeks subsequently punished Thebes by depriving it of the presidency of the Boeotian League, and an attempt by the Spartans to expel it from the Delphic amphictyony was only frustrated by the intercession of Athens.

In 457 Sparta, needing a counterpoise against Athens in central Greece, reversed her policy and reinstated Thebes as the dominant power in Boeotia.

The result of the war was especially disastrous to Thebes, as the general settlement of 387 stipulated the complete autonomy of all Greek towns and so withdrew the other Boeotians from its political control.

Some years of desultory fighting, in which Thebes established its control over all Boeotia, culminated in 371 in a remarkable victory over the pick of the Spartans at Leuctra.

But the predominance of Thebes was short-lived.

The states which she protected were indisposed to commit themselves permanently to her tutelage, and the renewed rivalry of Athens, which had been linked with Thebes since 395 in a common fear of Sparta, but since 371 had endeavoured to maintain the balance of power against her ally, prevented the formation of a Theban empire.

A revulsion of feeling was completed in 338 by the orator Demosthenes, who persuaded Thebes to join Athens in a final attempt to bar Philip's advance upon Attica.

Philip was content to deprive Thebes of her dominion over Boeotia; but an unsuccessful revolt in 335 against his son Alexander was punished by the complete destruction of the city, except, according to tradition, the house of the poet Pindar.

Though restored in 315 by Cassander, Thebes never again played a prominent part in 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.

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 little or no topographical value.

The literary glory of Thebes is centred in the poet Pindar.

Tirhakah, who had reoccupied Egypt, fled to Ethiopia, and the Assyrian army spent forty days in ascending the Nile from Memphis to Thebes.

Tirhakah died 66 7 B.C., and his successor Tandaman (Tanuat-Amon) entered Upper Egypt, where a general revolt against Assyria took place, headed by Thebes.

When Dionysus, with his band of frenzied women (Maenads) arrived at Thebes (his native place and the first city visited by him in Greece), Pentheus denied his divinity and violently opposed the introduction of his rites.

His head was carried back to Thebes in triumph by his mother.

Glaucus, usually surnamed Potnieus, from Potniae near Thebes, son of Sisyphus by Merope and father of Bellerophon.

He was one of those whose surrender was demanded by Alexander after the destruction of Thebes, but escaped with banishment.

It is possible that the frequent association of Aphrodite with Ares is to be explained by an armed Aphrodite early worshipped at Thebes, the most ancient seat of the worship of Ares.

At Thebes, Harmonia (who has been identified with Aphrodite herself) dedicated three statues, of Aphrodite Urania, Pandemos, and Apostrophia.

According to the usual tradition, he was born at Thebes - originally the local centre of his worship in Greece - and was the son of Zeus, the fertilizing rain god, and Semele, the daughter of Cadmus, a personification of earth.

Upon the seizure of the Theban citadel by the Spartans (383 or 382) he fled to Athens, and took the lead in a conspiracy to liberate Thebes.

In order to secure the influence of Thebes, he brought home hostages, including the king's brother, afterwards Philip II., the conqueror of Greece.

On his return through Thessaly he was seized by Alexander of Pherae, and two expeditions from Thebes were needed to secure his release.

It revolted from Egypt on two occasions, but was reconquered, and a sculpture at Thebes depicts the storming of the city.

The two former are lost, and most scholars deny the authenticity of the Tabula on the ground of material and verbal anachronisms. They attribute it either to Cebes of Cyzicus (above) or to an anonymous author, of the ist century A.D., who assumed the character of Cebes of Thebes.

The work professes to be an interpretation of an allegorical picture in the temple of Cronus at Athens or Thebes.

Eteocles, however, refused to keep the agreement, and Polyneices fled to Adrastus, king of Argos, whom he persuaded to undertake the famous expedition against Thebes on his behalf.

The fate of Eteocles and Polyneices forms the subject of the Seven against Thebes of Aeschylus and the Phoenissae of Euripides.

He saw Cadiz, Seville, Granada, Athens, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Cairo, Thebes; played the corsair with James Clay on a yacht voyage from Malta to Corfu; visited the terrible Reschid, then with a Turkish army in the Albanian capital; landed in Cyprus, and left it with an expectation in his singularly prescient mind that the island would one day be English.

It stood on level ground commanded by the low range of hills which runs eastward from the foot of Mount Helicon to Thebes.

Thespiae figures chiefly in history as an enemy of Thebes, whose centralizing policy it had all the more to fear because of the proximity of the two towns.

In the Corinthi a n war Thespiae sided with Sparta, and between 379 and 372 repeatedly served the Spartans as a base against Thebes.

In 171 B.C., true to its policy of opposing Thebes, it sought the friendship of Rome.

Similarly on land, the post it occupied between northern Greece and the Peloponnese materially influenced its relation to other states, both in respect of its alliances, such as that with Thessaly, towards which it was drawn by mutual hostility to Boeotia, which lay between them; and also in respect of offensive combinations of other powers, as that between Thebes and Sparta, which throughout an important part of Greek history were closely associated in their politics, through mutual dread of their powerful neighbour.

Three roads lead to Athens from the Boeotian frontier over the intervening mountain barrier - the easternmost over Parnes, from Delium and Oropus by Decelea, which was the usual route of the invading Lacedaemonians during the Peloponnesian War; the westernmost over Cithaeron, by the pass of Dryoscephalae, or the "Oakheads," leading from Thebes by Plataea to Eleusis, and so to Athens, which we hear of in connexion with the battle of Plataea, and with the escape of the Plataeans at the time of the siege of that city in the Peloponnesian War; the third, midway between the two, by the pass of Phyle, near the summit of which, on a rugged height overlooking the Athenian plain, is the fort occupied by Thrasybulus in the days of the Thirty Tyrants.

This, his second, reign in Egypt (88-80), was marked by a native rebellion which issued in the destruction of Thebes.

Sparta, favoured by the depression of Thebes in the Phocian War, was threatening Megalopolis.

Thebes had for ten years been at war with Phocis.

He has frightened Thebes.

It was Demosthenes who went to Byzantium, brought the estranged city back to the Athenian alliance, and snatched it from the hands of Philip. It was Demosthenes who, when Philip had already seized Elatea, hurried to Thebes, who by his passionate appeal gained one last chance, the only possible chance, for Greek freedom, who broke down the barrier of an inveterate jealousy, who brought Thebans to fight beside Athenians, and who thus won at the eleventh hour a victory for the spirit of loyal union which took away at least one bitterness from the unspeakable calamity of Chaeronea.

It was the day on which, thirteen years before, Alexander had punished the rebellion of Thebes with annihilation.

The inability of the council to enforce its resolutions was chiefly due to its composition; the majority of the communities represented were even in combination no match for individual cities like Athens, Sparta or Thebes.

The council was a power in politics only when manipulated by a great state, as Thebes, Macedon or Aetolia, and in such a case its decrees were most likely to give offence by their partisanship. Although the council sometimes championed the Hellenic cause, as could any association or individual, it never acquired a recognized authority over all Greece; and notwithstanding its frequent participation in political affairs, it remained essentially a religious convocation.

His adventurers (known as the Catalan Grand Company) declared war upon Andronicus, and, after devastating Thrace and Macedonia, conquered the duchy of Athens and Thebes.

The great temple avenues at Thebes are lined with recumbent rams, true sphinxes (a few late instances), and with the so-called criosphinxes or ram-sphinxes, having lion bodies and heads of the sacred animal of Ammon.

The result of the battle was to transfer the Greek supremacy from Sparta to Thebes.

The lower Nile valley, however, forms an exception; flint implements of a palaeolithic type have been found near Thebes, not only on the surface of the ground, which for several thousand years has been desert owing to the contraction of the river-bed, but also in stratified gravel of an older date.

At Thebes Antiope now suffered from the persecution of Dirce, the wife of Lycus, but at last escaped towards Eleutherae, and there found shelter, unknowingly, in the house where her two sons were living as herdsmen.

Cabeiro, who is mentioned in the logographers Acusilaus and Pherecydes as the wife of Hephaestus, is identical with Demeter, who indeed is expressly called Kaaeipia in Thebes.

In 1888 interesting details as to the Boeotian cult of the Cabeiri were obtained by the excavations of their temple in the neighbourhood of Thebes, conducted by the German archaeological institute.

The word Acropolis, though Greek in origin and associated primarily with Greek towns (Athens, Argos, Thebes, Corinth), may be applied generically to all such citadels (Rome, Jerusalem, many in Asia Minor, or even Castle Hill at Edinburgh).

Some two hundred years later the priests of Amen (Ammon), flying from Thebes, founded a quasi-Egyptian capital at Napata.

The carriage-road from Athens to Thebes crosses the range by a picturesque defile (the pass of Dryoscephalae, "Oak-heads"), which was at one time guarded on the Attic side by a strong fortress, the ruins of which are known as Ghyphto-kastro ("Gipsy Castle").

The Thessalians now applied to Thebes; Pelopidas, who was sent to their assistance, was treacherously seized and thrown into prison (368), and it was necessary to send Epaminondas with a large army to secure his release.

Thebes had taken up arms. By a forced march he took the Thebans completely by surprise, and in a few days the city, which a generation before had won the headship of Greece, was taken.

In addition to the two tragedies of Sophocles, the legend formed the subject of a trilogy by Aeschylus, of which only the Seven against Thebes is extant; of the Phoenissae of Euripides; and of the Oedipus and Phoenissae of Seneca.

In 1890 and 1893 Sta y s cleared out certain less rich dome-tombs at Thoricus in Attica; and other graves, either rock-cut "bee-hives" or chambers, were found at Spata and Aphidna in Attica, in Aegina and Salamis, at the Heraeum (see Argos) and Nauplia in the Argolid, near Thebes and Delphi, and not far from the Thessalian Larissa.

On the 21st of November 130, Hadrian (or at any rate his wife Sabina) heard the music which issued at sunrise from the statue of Memnon at Thebes (see Memnon).

Survival of fair hair and complexion and light eyes among the upper classes in Thebes and some other localities shows that the blonde type of mankind which is characteristic of north-western Europe had already penetrated into Greek lands before classical times; but the ascription of the same physical traits to the Achaeans of Homer forbids us to regard them as peculiar to that latest wave of pre-classical immigrants to which the Dorians belong; and there is no satisfactory evidence as to the coloration of the Spartans, who alone were reputed to be pure-blooded Dorians in historic times.

Games in his honour were held at Thebes and Marathon and annual festivals in every deme of Attica, in Sicyon and Agyrium (Sicily).

Yet disaffection against Thebes was now growing rife, and Sparta fostered this feeling by stipulating for the complete independence of all the cities in the peace of Antalcidas (387).

Corinth did not regain Sollium and Anactorium, while Megara and Thebes respectively were indignant that Athens should retain Nisaea and receive Panactum.

Thebes and Ammon and the traditions of the Empire savoured too much now of the Ethiopian; the priests of1 the Memphite and Deltaic dynasty thereupon turned deliberately for their models to the times of the ancient supremacy of Memphis, and the sculptures and texts on tomb and temple had to conform as closely as possible to those of the Old Kingdom.

A citizen of Athens, who had known the evils of the border-war between Thebes and Phocis, would readily perceive the analogy of a similar war between Thebes and Athens, and conclude analogously that it would be evil; but he would have to generalize the similarity of all border-wars in order to draw the inductive conclusion that all alike are evil.

The record of the earliest days of Thebes was preserved among the Greeks in an abundant mass of legends which rival the myths of Troy in their wide ramification and the influence which they exerted upon the literature of the classical age.

Instead of the three plain arches or doorways, he built a trompe l'oeil vision of the city of Thebes.

In mythological accounts, Aphrodite also wed Poseidon and the mortal Kadmos (founding king of Thebes).

A tattooed female mummy discovered in the Egyptian city of Thebes dates back 3,000 to 4,000 years.

Butterfly art works date back 3500 years to the Egyptian frescoes located at Thebes, making butterfly tattoos perfect for art lovers, Ancient Egyptian mythology fans and people with Egyptian antecedents.

The Spartans were successful but did not pursue their advantage, and soon afterwards the Athenians, seizing their opportunity, sallied forth again, and, after a victory under Myronides at Oenophyta, obtained the submission of all Boeotia, save Thebes, and of Phocis and Locris.

The Troy-book, undertaken at the command of Henry V., then prince of Wales, dates from 1412-1420; the Story of Thebes from 1420-1422; and the Falls of Princes towards 1430.

Overtures were unquestionably made by Thebes for an alliance with Aegina c. but they came to nothing.

He took part in the expedition of the Epigoni against Thebes and in the Trojan War.

He afterwards left Libya and went to Thebes, where he received instruction from the Muses in the arts of healing and prophecy,.

The leading earlier Cynics were Antisthenes, Diogenes of Sinope, Crates of Thebes, and Zeno; in the later Roman period, the chief names are Demetrius (the friend of Seneca), Oenomaus and Demonax.

She was regarded as the ancestress of the Heracleidae, and worshipped at Thebes and Athens.

After his death she returned to Thebes, where Haemon, the son of Creon, king of Thebes, became enamoured of her.

In the order of the events, at least, Sophocles departed from the original legend, according to which the burial of Polyneices took place while Oedipus was yet in Thebes, not after he had died at Colonus.

When the boy grew up, he went to some funeral games at Thebes, and was recognized by the mark of a dragon on his body.

Epicaste (as Jocasta is called in Homer) hanged herself, and Oedipus lived as king in Thebes tormented by the Erinyes of his mother.

The Theban legend, which reached its fullest development in the Thebais of Statius and in Seneca, reappeared in the Roman de Thebes (the work of an unknown imitator of Benoit de Sainte-More).

It is the centre for visitors to the ruins of and about Thebes, and is frequented by travellers and invalids in the winter season, several fine hotels having been built for their accommodation.

The temple of Luxor is one of the greatest of the monuments of Thebes (q.v.).