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58-592: The Theban hegemony lasted from the Theban victory over the Spartans at Leuctra in 371 BC to their defeat of a coalition of Peloponnesian armies at Mantinea in 362 BC, though Thebes sought to maintain its position until finally eclipsed by the rising power of Macedon in 346 BC. Externally, the way was paved for Theban ascendancy by the collapse of Athenian power in the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), through

116-634: A Jewish population of 2,000, the largest Jewish community in any Byzantine city of the 12th century, except for Constantinople. Though severely plundered by the Normans in 1146, Thebes quickly recovered its prosperity and continued to grow rapidly until its conquest by the Latins of the Fourth Crusade in 1205. Thanks to its wealth, the city was selected by the Frankish dynasty de la Roche as its capital, before it

174-644: A Mycenaean settlement and clay tablets written in the Linear B script, indicating the importance of the site in the Bronze Age . Thebes was the largest city of the ancient region of Boeotia and was the leader of the Boeotian confederacy. It was a major rival of ancient Athens , and sided with the Persians during the 480 BC invasion under Xerxes I . Theban forces under the command of Epaminondas ended Spartan hegemony at

232-576: A contingent of 400 was sent to Thermopylae and remained there with Leonidas before being defeated alongside the Spartans, the governing aristocracy soon after joined King Xerxes I of Persia with great readiness and fought zealously on his behalf at the Battle of Plataea in 479 BC. The victorious Greeks subsequently punished Thebes by depriving it of the presidency of the Boeotian League and an attempt by

290-462: A democratic constitution was set up in place of the traditional oligarchy. In the consequent wars with Sparta, the Theban army, trained and led by Epaminondas and Pelopidas , proved itself formidable (see also: Sacred Band of Thebes ). Years of desultory fighting, in which Thebes established its control over all Boeotia, culminated in 371 BC in a remarkable victory over the Spartans at Leuctra . The winners were hailed throughout Greece as champions of

348-533: A hostage, and had learnt much of the art of war from Pelopidas . Philip had honoured this fact, always seeking alliances with the Boeotians, even in the lead-up to Chaeronea. Thebes was also revered as the most ancient of Greek cities, with a history of over 1,000 years. Plutarch relates that, during his later conquests, whenever Alexander came across a former Theban, he would attempt to redress his destruction of Thebes with favours to that individual. Following Alexander

406-449: A power vacuum throughout much of Greece, which contributed, in part, to Thebes' besiegement by Demetrius Poliorcetes in 293 BC, and again after a revolt in 292 BC . This last siege was difficult and Demetrius was wounded, but finally he managed to break down the walls and to take the city once more, treating it mildly despite its fierce resistance. The city recovered its autonomy from Demetrius in 287 BC, and became allied with Lysimachus ,

464-594: A severe defeat on an invading force of Athenians at the Battle of Delium , and for the first time displayed the effects of that firm military organization that eventually raised them to predominant power in Greece. After the downfall of Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian War, the Thebans, having learned that Sparta intended to protect the states that Thebes desired to annex, broke off the alliance. In 404 BC, they had urged

522-468: A sophisticated accounting system. In this cultural region, tablets were never fired deliberately as the clay was recycled on an annual basis. However, some of the tablets were "fired" as a result of uncontrolled fires in the buildings where they were stored. The rest, remain tablets of unfired clay and are therefore extremely fragile. For this reason, some institutions are investigating the possibility of firing them now to aid in their preservation. Writing

580-492: A special Athenian embassy, led by Phocion , an opponent of the anti-Macedonian faction, was able to persuade Alexander to give up his demands for the exile of leaders of the anti-Macedonian party, and most particularly Demosthenes and not sell the people into slavery. Ancient writings tend to treat Alexander's destruction of Thebes as excessive. Plutarch, however, writes that Alexander grieved after his excess, granting them any request of favors, and advising they pay attention to

638-558: Is known as pictograms . Pictograms are symbols that express a pictorial concept, a logogram , as the meaning of the word. Early writing also began in Ancient Egypt using hieroglyphs . Early hieroglyphs and some of the modern Chinese characters are other examples of pictographs. The Sumerians later shifted their writing to Cuneiform, defined as "Wedge writing" in Latin, which added phonetic symbols, syllabograms . Text on clay tablets took

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696-732: Is the largest town of the regional unit of Boeotia. In 2011, as a consequence of the Kallikratis reform , Thebes was merged with Plataies , Thisvi , and Vagia to form a larger municipality , which retained the name Thebes. The other three became units of the larger municipality. Archaeological excavations in and around Thebes have revealed cist graves dated to Mycenaean times containing weapons, ivory, and tablets written in Linear B . Its attested name forms and relevant terms on tablets found locally or elsewhere include 𐀳𐀣𐀂 , te-qa-i , understood to be read as * Tʰēgʷai̮s (Ancient Greek: Θήβαις , Thēbais , i.e. "at Thebes", Thebes in

754-458: Is −7.9 °C (17.8 °F), recorded on 10 January 2017. In contrast, the city can be very hot in the summer during heat waves , having reached a record high of 44.5 °C (112.1 °F) on 3 August 2021. Clay tablet In the Ancient Near East , clay tablets ( Akkadian ṭuppu(m) 𒁾 ) were used as a writing medium, especially for writing in cuneiform , throughout

812-633: The Amphictyonic council in Delphi, but when this resulted in their former allies the Phocians seizing Delphi and beginning the Third Sacred War (c. 355), Thebes proved too exhausted to bring any conclusion to the conflict. The war was finally ended in 346 BC, by the forces not of Thebes, or any of the city-states, but of Philip of Macedon, to whom the city-states had grown desperate enough to turn. This signalled

870-563: The Athens–Thessaloniki railway connect Thebes with Athens and northern Greece. The municipality of Thebes covers an area of 830.112 km (320.508 sq mi), the municipal unit of Thebes 321.015 km (123.945 sq mi) and the community 143.889 km (55.556 sq mi). According to the nearby weather station of Aliartos , Thebes has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate ( Köppen climate classification : Csa ) with hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters. During

928-549: The Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC, with the Sacred Band of Thebes , an elite military unit of male lovers, celebrated as instrumental there. Macedonia would rise in power at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC , bringing decisive victory to Philip II over an alliance of Thebes and Athens. Thebes was a major force in Greek history prior to its destruction by Alexander the Great in 335 BC, and

986-507: The Battle of Mantinea , but not to re-establish any real Spartan ascendancy . This was if anything a Pyrrhic victory for both states. Sparta lacked the manpower and resources to make any real attempt at regaining her empire and Thebes had now lost both of the innovative leaders who had allowed her rise to dominance and was similarly reduced in resources to the point where that dominance could not be guaranteed. The Thebans sought to maintain their position through diplomacy and their influence at

1044-622: The Bronze Age and well into the Iron Age . Cuneiform characters were imprinted on a wet clay tablet with a stylus often made of reed ( reed pen ). Once written upon, many tablets were dried in the sun or air, remaining fragile. Later, these unfired clay tablets could be soaked in water and recycled into new clean tablets. Other tablets, once written, were either deliberately fired in hot kilns , or inadvertently fired when buildings were burnt down by accident or during conflict, making them hard and durable. Collections of these clay documents made up

1102-645: The Latin Archbishop of Thebes , Simon Atumano . Latin hegemony in Thebes lasted to 1458, when the Ottomans captured it. The Ottomans renamed Thebes "İstefe" and managed it until the Greek War of Independence (1821, nominally to 1832) except for a Venetian interlude between 1687 and 1699. In the modern Greek State, Thebes was the capital of the prefecture of Boeotia until the late 19th century, when Livadeia became

1160-428: The dative - locative case), 𐀳𐀣𐀆 , te-qa-de , for * Tʰēgʷasde ( Θήβασδε , Thēbasde , i.e. "to Thebes"), and 𐀳𐀣𐀊 , te-qa-ja , for * Tʰēgʷaja ( Θηβαία , Thēbaia , i.e. "Theban woman"). * Tʰēgʷai was one of the first Greek communities to be drawn together within a fortified city, and that it owed its importance in prehistoric days—as later—to its military strength. Deger-Jalkotzy claimed that

1218-521: The rise of Macedon within Greece and finally brought to an end a Theban hegemony which had already been in decline. Ancient Thebes (Boeotia) It played an important role in Greek myths , as the site of the stories of Cadmus , Oedipus , Dionysus , Heracles and others. One myth had the city founded by Agenor , which gave rise to the (now somewhat obscure) name "Agenorids" to denote Thebans. Archaeological excavations in and around Thebes have revealed

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1276-657: The Boeotian Plain began in 373 when the Boeotians defeated and destroyed the town of Plataea , strategically important as the only Athenian ally in Boeotia . This was taken as a direct challenge by the previous hegemonic power, the Spartans, who gambled on restoring their waning ascendancy by a decisive defeat of the Thebans. At Leuctra, in Boeotia, the Thebans comprehensively defeated an invading Spartan army . Out of 700 Spartan citizen-soldiers present, 400 died at Leuctra. After this,

1334-498: The Great while he was campaigning in the north was punished by Alexander and his Greek allies with the destruction of the city (except, according to tradition, the house of the poet Pindar and the temples), and its territory divided between the other Boeotian cities. Moreover, the Thebans themselves were sold into slavery . Alexander spared only priests, leaders of the pro-Macedonian party and descendants of Pindar. The end of Thebes cowed Athens into submission. According to Plutarch,

1392-550: The Great's death in 323 BC, Thebes was re-established in 315 BC by Cassander , one of the diadochi who was ruling in Greece. In restoring Thebes, Cassander sought to rectify the perceived wrongs of Alexander – a gesture of generosity that earned him much goodwill throughout Greece. In addition to currying favor with the Athenians and many of the Peloponnesian states, Cassander's restoration of Thebes provided him with loyal allies in

1450-455: The Spartans to expel it from the Delphic amphictyony was only frustrated by the intercession of Athens. In 457 BC Sparta , needing a counterpoise against Athens in central Greece, reversed her policy and reinstated Thebes as the dominant power in Boeotia. The great citadel of Cadmea served this purpose well by holding out as a base of resistance when the Athenians overran and occupied the rest of

1508-451: The Spartans. The result of the war was especially disastrous to Thebes, as the general settlement of 387 BC stipulated the complete autonomy of all Greek towns and so withdrew the other Boeotians from its political control. Its power was further curtailed in 382 BC, when a Spartan force occupied the citadel by a treacherous coup de main . Three years later, the Spartan garrison was expelled and

1566-483: The Theban exiles who returned to resettle the site. Cassander's plan for rebuilding Thebes called for the various Greek city-states to provide skilled labor and manpower, and ultimately it proved successful. The Athenians, for example, rebuilt much of Thebes' wall. Major contributions were sent from Megalopolis , Messene , and as far away as Sicily and Italy. Despite the restoration, Thebes never regained its former prominence. The death of Cassander in 297 BC created

1624-520: The Thebans systematically dominated Greece. In the south, they invaded the Peloponnese to liberate the Messenians and Arcadians from Spartan overlordship and set up a pro-Theban Arcadian League to oversee Peloponnesian affairs. In the north, they invaded Thessaly , to crush the growing local power of Pherae and took the future Philip II of Macedon hostage, bringing him to Thebes. Pelopidas, however

1682-400: The balance of power against its ally, preventing the formation of a Theban empire. With the death of Epaminondas at the Battle of Mantinea (362 BC) , the city sank again to the position of a secondary power. In the Third Sacred War (356–346 BC) with its neighbor Phocis , Thebes lost its predominance in central Greece. By asking Philip II of Macedon to crush the Phocians, Thebes extended

1740-450: The battlefield where the Battle of Plataea took place. The proximity to other, more famous travel destinations, like Athens and Chalkis , and the undeveloped archaeological sites have kept the tourist numbers low. A notable portion of the inhabitants of Thebes are Arvanites . The record of the earliest days of Thebes was preserved among the Greeks in an abundant mass of legends that rival

1798-430: The capital. Today, Thebes is a bustling market town , known for its many products and wares. Until the 1980s, it had a flourishing agrarian production with some industrial complexes. However, during the late 1980s and 1990s the bulk of industry moved further south, closer to Athens . Tourism in the area is based mainly in Thebes and the surrounding villages, where many places of interest related to antiquity exist such as

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1856-428: The city served as a regional administrative center, home to a local elite, a major producer of silk textiles, and an important regional market, all of which contributed to urban and demographic growth. Although there is no specific data on Thebes' overall population, estimates suggest it housed between 20,000 and 30,000 inhabitants, typical for a major Byzantine provincial city. Benjamin of Tudela reported that Thebes had

1914-407: The clay tablet. Some of the recipes were stew, which was made with goat, garlic, onions and sour milk. By the end of the 3rd Millennium BCE, (2200–2000 BCE), even the "short story" was first attempted, as independent scribes entered into the philosophical arena, with stories like: " Debate between bird and fish ", and other topics, ( List of Sumerian debates ). Communication grew faster as now there

1972-428: The clay; the clay tablets themselves came in a variety of colors such as bone white, chocolate, and charcoal. Pictographs then began to appear on clay tablets around 4000 BCE, and after the later development of Sumerian cuneiform writing, a more sophisticated partial syllabic script evolved that by around 2500 BCE was capable of recording the vernacular, the everyday speech of the common people. Sumerians used what

2030-437: The complete destruction of Athens; yet, in 403 BC, they secretly supported the restoration of its democracy in order to find in it a counterpoise against Sparta. A few years later, influenced perhaps in part by Persian gold, they formed the nucleus of the league against Sparta. At the Battle of Haliartus (395 BC) and the Battle of Coronea (394 BC), they again proved their rising military capacity by standing their ground against

2088-415: The country (457–447 BC). In the Peloponnesian War , the Thebans, embittered by the support that Athens gave to the smaller Boeotian towns, and especially to Plataea, which they vainly attempted to reduce in 431 BC, were firm allies of Sparta, which in turn helped them to besiege Plataea and allowed them to destroy the town after its capture in 427 BC. In 424 BC, at the head of the Boeotian levy, they inflicted

2146-536: The first archives. They were at the root of the first libraries . Tens of thousands of written tablets, including many fragments, have been found in the Middle East. Surviving tablet-based documents from the Minoan / Mycenaean civilizations, are mainly those which were used for accounting. Tablets serving as labels with the impression of the side of a wicker basket on the back, and tablets showing yearly summaries, suggest

2204-557: The former's power within dangerous proximity to its frontiers. The revulsion of popular feeling in Thebes was expressed in 338 BC by the orator Demosthenes , who persuaded Thebes to join Athens in a final attempt to bar Philip's advance on Attica. The Theban contingent lost the decisive battle of Chaeronea and along with it every hope of reassuming control over Greece. Philip was content to deprive Thebes of its dominion over Boeotia; but an unsuccessful revolt in 335 BC against his son Alexander

2262-407: The forms of myths, fables, essays, hymns, proverbs, epic poetry, business records, laws, plants, and animals. What these clay tablets allowed was for individuals to record who and what was significant. An example of these great stories was Epic of Gilgamesh . This story would tell of the great flood that destroyed Sumer. Remedies and recipes that would have been unknown were then possible because of

2320-566: The invasion of Asia, and that if he failed, Thebes might once again become the ruling city-state. Although Thebes had traditionally been antagonistic to whichever state led the Greek world, siding with the Persians when they invaded against the Athenian-Spartan alliance, siding with Sparta when Athens seemed omnipotent, and famously derailing the Spartan invasion of Persia by Agesilaus . Alexander's father Philip had been raised in Thebes, albeit as

2378-647: The king of Thrace, and the Aetolian League . After the dissolution of the Boeotian League after the Achaean War of 146 BC, Thebes came under Roman rule. In 27 BC, the city was included in the newly established Province of Achaia. Thebes was assigned to the Eastern Roman Empire after the imperial division of 395. During the early Byzantine period it served as a place of refuge against foreign invaders. In

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2436-509: The late 6th century BC, the Thebans were brought for the first time into hostile contact with the Athenians , who helped the small village of Plataea to maintain its independence against them, and in 506 BC repelled an inroad into Attica. The aversion to Athens best serves to explain the apparently unpatriotic attitude which Thebes displayed during the Persian invasion of Greece (480–479 BC). Though

2494-709: The late 7th century, Justinian II created the Theme of Hellas with Thebes as the capital. The Holy church of Luke the Evangelist was built around the 10th century to commemorate the saint's tomb and relics at the location of his death. During the Byzantine–Bulgarian war of 913–927 , Thebes was sacked by Simeon I of Bulgaria . From the 10th century, Thebes became a centre of the new silk trade, its silk workshops boosted by imports of soaps and dyes from Athens. The growth of this trade in Thebes continued to such an extent that by

2552-557: The late LHIIIB, according to Palaima, * Tʰēgʷai was able to pull resources from Lamos near Mount Helicon , and from Karystos and Amarynthos on the Greek side of the isle of Euboia . As attested already in Homer 's Iliad , Thebes was often called "Seven-Gated Thebes" (Θῆβαι ἑπτάπυλοι, Thebai heptapyloi ) ( Iliad , IV.406) to distinguish it from " Hundred-Gated Thebes " (Θῆβαι ἑκατόμπυλοι, Thebai hekatompyloi ) in Egypt ( Iliad , IX.383). In

2610-468: The middle of the 12th century, the city had become the biggest producer of silks in the entire Byzantine empire, surpassing even the Byzantine capital, Constantinople . The women of Thebes were famed for their skills at weaving. Theban silk was prized above all others during this period, both for its quality and its excellent reputation. Benjamin of Tudela visited Thebes around 1161 or 1162. At that time,

2668-557: The myths of Troy in their wide ramification and the influence that they exerted on the literature of the classical age. Five main cycles of story may be distinguished: The Greeks attributed the foundation of Thebes to Cadmus, a Phoenician king from Tyre (now in Lebanon) and the brother of Queen Europa . Cadmus was famous for teaching the Phoenician alphabet and building the Acropolis , which

2726-589: The oppressed. They carried their arms into Peloponnesus and at the head of a large coalition, permanently crippled the power of Sparta, in part by freeing many helot slaves, the basis of the Spartan economy. Similar expeditions were sent to Thessaly and Macedon to regulate the affairs of those regions. The predominance of Thebes was short-lived, as the states that it protected refused to subject themselves permanently to its control. Thebes renewed its rivalry with Athens, which had joined with them in 395 BC in fear of Sparta, but since 387 BC had endeavoured to maintain

2784-534: The statue base from Kom el-Hetan in Amenhotep III 's kingdom ( LHIII A:1) mentions a name similar to Thebes, spelled out quasi-syllabically in hieroglyphs as d-q-e-i-s , and considered to be one of four tj-n3-jj ( Danaan ?) kingdoms worthy of note (alongside Knossos and Mycenae). * Tʰēgʷai in LHIIIB lost contact with Egypt but gained it with "Miletus" ( Hittite : Milawata ) and "Cyprus" (Hittite: Alashija ). In

2842-448: The tablet were carbon dated ) to before 4000 BCE, and possibly dating from as long ago as 5500 BCE, but their interpretation remains controversial because the tablets were fired in a furnace and the properties of the carbon changed accordingly. Fragments of tablets containing the Epic of Gilgamesh dating to 1800–1600 BCE have been discovered. A full version has been found on tablets dated to

2900-539: The trade of sheep, grain, and bread loaves, where transactions were recorded with clay tokens. These, initially very small clay tokens, were continually used all the way from the pre-historic Mesopotamia period, 9000 BCE, to the start of the historic period around 3000 BCE, when the use of writing for recording was widely adopted. The clay tablet was thus being used by scribes to record events happening during their time. Tools that these scribes used were styluses with sharp triangular tips, making it easy to leave markings on

2958-428: The weakening of the Spartans by their oliganthropia (demographic decline) and by the inconclusive Corinthian War (395–386 BC). Internally, the Thebans enjoyed two temporary military advantages: The Thebans had traditionally enjoyed the hegemony of the Boeotian League , the oligarchical federation of Aeolic -speaking Greeks to the immediate north-west of Athenian-dominated Attica . Their brief rise to power outside

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3016-511: The winter months, Thebes is sometimes affected by the Aegean sea-effect snow , with snow depths reaching over 50 centimetres (20 in) on several occasions. Due to its inland location, Thebes may also record very low minimums. In recent years, as registered by the meteorological station operated by the National Observatory of Athens within the city limits, the record minimum temperature

3074-503: Was a way to get messages across just like mail. Important and private clay tablets were coated with an extra layer of clay, that no one else would read it. This means of communicating was used for over 3000 years in fifteen different languages. Sumerians, Babylonians and Eblaites all had their own clay tablet libraries. The Tărtăria tablets , the Danubian civilization , may be still older, having been dated by indirect method (bones found near

3132-496: Was killed at Cynoscephalae , in battle against troops from Pherae (though the battle was actually won by the Thebans). The Thebans overstretched themselves strategically and, in their efforts to maintain control of the north, their power in the south disintegrated. The Spartan king, Agesilaus II , scraped together an army from various Peloponnesian towns dissatisfied with Theban rule and managed to kill but not defeat Epaminondas in

3190-560: Was named the Cadmeia in his honor and was an intellectual, spiritual, and cultural center. Thebes is situated in a plain, between Lake Yliki (ancient Hylica ) to the north, and the Cithaeron mountains, which divide Boeotia from Attica , to the south. Its elevation is 215 m (705 ft) above mean sea level . It is about 50 km (31 mi) northwest of Athens , and 100 km (62 mi) southeast of Lamia . The A1 motorway and

3248-522: Was not as we see it today. In Mesopotamia, writing began as simple counting marks, sometimes alongside a non-arbitrary sign, in the form of a simple image, pressed into clay tokens or less commonly cut into wood, stone or pots. In that way, the exact number of goods involved in a transaction could be recorded. This convention began when people developed agriculture and settled into permanent communities that were centered on increasingly large and organized trading marketplaces. These marketplaces were purposed for

3306-626: Was permanently moved to Athens. After 1240, the Saint Omer family controlled the city jointly with the de la Roche dukes. The castle built by Nicholas II of Saint Omer on the Cadmea was one of the most beautiful of Frankish Greece. After its conquest in 1311 the city was used as a capital by the short-lived state of the Catalan Company . In 1379, the Navarrese Company took the city with the aid of

3364-558: Was the most dominant city-state at the time of the Macedonian conquest of Greece. During the Byzantine period, the city was famous for its silks. The modern city contains an archaeological museum, the remains of the Cadmea (Bronze Age and forward citadel), and scattered ancient remains. The Holy Church of Luke the Evangelist is also in Thebes and contains Luke's tomb and relics. Modern Thebes

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