The Thebes Times

The history of Thebes

Thebes, a city of ancient Greece, it located in north of Mount, northwest of Athens. Its acropolis was called Cadmeia, from the legend that it was founded by acolony of Phoenicians under Cadmus. No city of ancient Greece was more celebrated in myth and legend than Thebes. 

Thebes in historical times was long an enemy of Athens, and in 479 BC, during the Persian invasion under Xerxes I, the Thebans sided with the invaders and fought against the confederated Greeks at Plataea. When the Peloponnesian War broke out in 431 BC, Thebes joined the side of Sparta and at the close of the war was eager for the destruction of Athens; it soon, however, began to dread the heightened power of its ally and joined (394 BC) the confederation against Sparta.

Hence arose a bitter antagonism between Thebes and Sparta, and a struggle ensued that resulted in a short period of Theban supremacy over all Greece, won by the victory of Epaminondas at Leuctra in 371 BC, and brought to an end by the death of Epaminondas at Mantinea in 362 BC.

The eloquence of the Athenian orator Demosthenes induced the Thebans to unite with the Athenians in opposition to the encroachments of King Philip II of Macedonia, but their combined forces were of no avail, and in 338 BC, in the Battle of Chaeronea, the power of Greece was crushed. After the death of Philip, the Thebans made a fierce but unsuccessful attempt to regain their freedom. Their city was taken (335 BC) by Philip's son and successor, Alexander the Great, and leveled to the ground, and the entire surviving population was sold into slavery. Alexander is said to have spared only the temples and the house of the poet Pindar. Although the city was rebuilt (315 BC) by King Cassander of Macedonia and prospered for a time, it had dwindled to a wretched village by the 1st century BC. At present, the site of the acropolis named after Cadmus is occupied by the town of Thívai.