Thebae

Thēbae, ārum, f.: Thebes, the capital of Boeotia, 4.470.

Thēbānus, a, um: adj. (Thēbē), of Thebe, in Mysia; Theban, 9.697.

Thēbae, ārum (collat. form Thēbē, ēs, Juv. 15, 6; Plin. 5, 9, 11, § 60), f., = Θῆβαι (or Θήβη), Thebes, the name of several cities of antiquity.—The most considerable were,

• I The city of the hundred gates, in Upper Egypt, now Karnak, etc., Mel. 1, 9, 9; Plin. 5, 9, 11, § 60; 36, 7, 11, § 58; 36, 8, 12, § 60; 36, 13, 20, § 94 al.—Hence,
• • • 1 Thēbae-us, a, um, adj., of or belonging to Thebes, Theban: mons, in the Thebaid, Claud. Idyll. 1, 91.—
    • 2 Thēbāĭcus, a, um, adj., Theban: palmae, Plin. 23, 4, 51, § 97; called also simply Thebaicae, Stat. S. 4, 9, 26: triticum, Plin. 18, 7, 12, § 68: lapis, id. 36, 8, 13, § 63; 36, 22, 43, § 157: harena, id. 36, 6, 9, § 53: marmor, Spart. Nigr. 12.—
    • 3 Thē-bāïs, ĭdis, f. (sc. terra), the Thebaid, the capital of which was Thebes, Plin. 5, 9, 9, § 48; 12, 21, 46, § 100; 13, 4, 9, § 47 al. et saep.—
• II The chief city of Boeotia, one of the most ancient cities in Greece, founded by Cadmus, now Thive, Mel. 2, 3, 4; Plin. 4, 7, 12, § 25; 5, 19, 17, § 76; 7, 29, 30, § 109; Varr. R. R. 3, 1, 2; Cic. Inv. 1, 50, 93; Hor. C. 1, 7, 3; 4, 4, 64; id. Ep. 1, 16, 74.—Hence,
• • • 1 Thēbānus, a, um, adj., of or belonging to Thebes, Theban: Semele, Hor. C. 1, 19, 2: deus, i.e. Hercules, Prop. 3, 18 (4, 17), 6: urbs, i.e. Thebes, Hor. A. P. 394: duces, i.e. Eteocles and Polynices, Prop. 2, 9, 50; called also, Thebani fratres, Luc. 4, 551: soror, their sister Antigone, Ov. Tr. 3, 3, 67: mater, i.e. Niobe, Stat. Th. 1, 711: modi, i.e. Pindaric, Hor. Ep. 1, 3, 13: aenigma, i.e. of the Theban Sphinx, Mart. 1, 91, 9 et saep. —Plur. subst.: Thēbāni, ōrum, m., the innabitants of Thebes, the Thebans, Cic. Fat. 4, 7; id. Rep. 4, 4.—
    • 2 Thēbăïs, ĭdis, adj. f., Theban: chelys, i.e. of Amphion the Theban, Stat. S. 2, 2, 60: hospes, Sen. Agam. 315.—Substt.
    • • a Thēbăĭdes, um, f., the women of Thebes, Ov. M. 6, 163.—
      • b Thēbăïs, ĭdis, f.
      • • α Sc. terra, the district of Thebes, in Upper Egypt, Plin. 5, 9, 9, § 48; 12, 21, 46, § 100; 13, 4, 9, § 47 sq.—
        • β Sc. femina, a Theban woman, Ov. M. 6, 163; id. A. A. 3, 778.—
        • γ Sc. Musa, the song of Thebes (in Boeotia), the name of a poem by Statius, Stat. S. 3, 5, 36; id. Th. 12, 812; Juv. 7, 83.—
• III A city in Mysia, destroyed by Achilles, Ov. M. 12, 110; 13, 173; Mel. 1, 18, 2.—
• IV A city in Cilicia, Plin. 5, 27, 22, § 92.
• —Hence, Thēbāna, ae, f., the Theban dame, i.e. Andromache, the daughter of Eetion, king of Thebes in Mysia, Ov. Tr. 4, 3, 29.

Thēbae, ārum, f. (Θηβαι; Nbf. Thēbē, ēs, f. [Θήβη], s. unten), Name mehrerer Städte: I) älteste und wichtigste Stadt in Böotien am Ismenos, mit sieben Toren, Geburtsort Pindars, von Kadmus erbaut, dann von Amphion vergrößert, der obere Teil der Stadt noch jetzt Thiva, Mela 2, 3, 4 (2. § 40). Varro r.r. 3, 1, 2. Caes. b.c. 3, 55, 3. Cic. de fat. 7. Hor. carm. 1, 7, 3. – II) alte Hauptstadt von Oberägypten (Thebais), mit hundert Toren, später Διος πόλις (Diospolis) gen., am Nil, früher Residenz der ägyptischen Könige, Mela 1, 9, 9 (1. § 60). Plin. 5, 60 (Thebe). Iuven. 15, 6 (Thebe): hecatompyloe Thebae, Amm. 17, 4, 2; 22, 16, 2: Thebae Thebaidos, quae hecatompylae appellantur, Hyg. fab. 275 in. – III) Thebae Phthioticae od. Phthiae (Θηβαι αἱ Φθιώτιδες), Stadt in Thessalia Phthiotis, am Meere mit einem Hafen, später Philippopolis gen., j. Armiro, Liv. 28, 7, 12 u. 39, 25, 9: Thebae Thessalae, Plin. 4, 29. – IV) Stadt in Mysien, Residenz des Eetion, Schwiegervaters des Hektor, von Achilles zerstört, Ov. met. 12, 110; 13, 173. Plin. 5, 122 (Thebe). – Daselbst auch Thebes campus od. campus Thebe (τὸ Θήβης πεδίον), ein gesegneter Landstrich südlich vom Ida, bei Pergamus, Liv. 37, 19, 7. Mela 1, 18, 2 (1. § 91).

Dav. abgeleitet: A) Thēbaeus, a, um (Θηβαῖος), zu Theben in Ägypten gehörig, thebäisch, Claud. – subst., Thebaeī, ōrum, m., die Einw. von Theben, die Tyebäer, Spart. – B) Thēbaicus, a, um (Θηβαϊκός), in, aus Theben in Ägypten, thebaïsch, Plin. – subst. Thebaicae, ārum, f. (sc. palmulae), thebaïsche Datteln, Stat. – C) Thēbais, aidis u. aidos, f., 1) nach Theben in Ägypten gehörig, subst. = eine Landschaft in Ägypten, und zwar der obere Teil Ägyptens, worin die Hauptstadt Thebä ist, Plin. 5, 48. Hyg. fab. 275 in.: spät. Nbf. Thebaida, ae, f., Sulp. Sev. dial. 1, 23, 6: inferior, Hieron. vit. Paulin. § 4. Cassiod. hist. eccl. trip. 3, 6. – 2) nach Theben in Böotien gehörig, thebaïsch, chelys, des Thebaners Amphion, Stat. – subst.: α) Thebaides, Thebanerinnen, Ov. met. 6, 163. – β) Thebais, idos, f., ein Gedicht des Statius, von Theben in Böotien handelnd, Iuven. 7, 83. – 3) nach Theben in Mysien gehörig, thebaïsch, Thebais est Andromache, aus diesem Theben, Ov. – D) Thēbānus, a, um, 1) nach Thebä in Böotien gehörig, thebanisch, modi, pindarische, Hor.: dea, Ino (Leukothea, Matuta), Ov.: mater, Agave, Ov.: soror, Antigone, Schwester des Eteokles usw., Ov.: semina, die vom Thebaner Kadmus gesäten Drachenzähne, Ov.: duces, Eteokles u. Polynices, Prop.: deus, Herkules, Prop.: aenigma, Rätsel, wie sie die Sphinx bei Theben vorzulegen pflegte, Mart. – subst., Thebānus, ī, m., einer aus Theben, ein Thebaner, Nep.: Plur. Thebāni, ōrum, m. die Einw. von Theben, die Thebaner, Nep. – 2) nach Theben in Mysien gehörig, subst., Thebana, die Thebanerin, von der Andromache, Ov. trist. 4, 3, 29.

Thēbæ, (10) ārum, f. (Θῆβαι), ¶ 1 Thèbes [aux cent portes, capitale de la Haute-Égypte] : Plin. 5, 60 ; Mela 1, 60 ¶ 2 ville de Mysie détruite par Achille : Ov. M. 12, 110 ; Mela 1, 91 ¶ 3 ville de Béotie, fondée par Cadmus, patrie de Pindare : Mela 2, 40 ; Plin. 4, 25 ; Cic. Inv. 1, 93 ¶ 4 ville de Cilicie : Plin. 5, 92.

thebae, arum. f.
古大城名。

Suggest a Translation
See an image

THEBAE

THEBAE (Θῆβαι, Hdt. 1.182, 2.42; Strab. xvii. pp. 805,815, foil.; Thebe, Plin. Nat. 5.9. s. 11), the No (Ezekiel, 30.14) or NO-AMMON (Nahum, vv. 3, 8) of the Hebrew Scriptures; at alater period DIOSPOLIS the Great of the Greeks and Romans (Διόσπολις μεγάλη, Ptol. 4.5.73; Steph. B. s. v.), was one of the most ancient cities of Aegypt, and even, according to Diodorus (Diod. 1.50, comp. 15.45), of the world. Its foundation, like that of Memphis, was attributed to Menes, the first mortal king of Aegypt, i. e. it went back to the mythical period of Aegyptian history. By some writers, however, Memphis was reported to have been a colony of Thebes. It was the capital of the nome formed by the city itself and its environs, though Ptolemy (l. c.) describes it as pertaining to the Nome of Coptos. In all Upper Aegypt no spot is so adapted for the site of a great capital as the plain occupied by ancient Thebes. The mountain chains, the Libyan on the western, and the Arabian on the eastern, side of the Nile, sweep boldly from the river, and leave on both banks a spacious area, whose breadth, including the river, amounts to nearly 4 leagues, and the length from N. to S. is nearly as much. Towards the N. the plain is again closed in by the return of the hills to the Nile; but on the S., where the western chain continues distant, it remains open. The ground, therefore, on which Thebes stood was large enough to contain a city of at least equal extent with ancient Rome or modern Paris; and, according to Strabo, ancient Thebes covered the entire plain. Only a portion of it, however, was available for population. An immense area was covered with the temples and their avenues of sphinxes; and on the western side, as far as the Libyan hills, lay the monuments of the dead. On the eastern bank, therefore, the population was generally collected; and there it was probably densely crowded, since ancient writers assign to Thebes an almost incredible number of inhabitants, and Diodorus (Diod. 1.45) describes the houses as consisting of many stories. The extent of the city is very differently stated by ancient authors. Rumours of its greatness had reached the Greeks of Homer's age, who (Il. 9.381) speaks of its hundred gatesa nd its 20,000 war-chariots, just as the Arabian story-tellers speak of the glories of Bagdad or Damascus under the Caliphs. Before the Persian invasion (B.C. 525) no Greek writer had visited Thebes; and after that catastrophe its dimensions had considerably shrunk, since Cambyses is said to have burnt all such portions of Thebes as fire would destroy, i. e. all the private buildings; and under the Persian viceroys no Aegyptian city was likely to regain its original proportions. It does not appear that Herodotus ever visited Upper Egypt, and his account of Thebes is extremely vague and meagre. Diodorus, on the contrary, who saw it after its capture by Ptolemy Lathyrus, about B.C. 87, beheld Thebes in the second period of its decay, and after Alexandreia had diverted much of its commerce to Berenice and the Arsinoite bay. He estimates its circuit at 140 stadia or about 17 miles. Strabo, again, who went thither with the expedition of Aelius Gallus in B.C. 24, beheld Thebes at a still lower stage of decadence, and assigns it a compass of about 10 miles. But at that time the continuity of its parts was broken up, and it was divided into certain large hamlets (κωμήδον) detached from one another. Neither of these writers, accordingly, was in a position to state accurately the real dimensions of the city in its flourishing estate, i. e. between 1600 and 800 i. c. Modern travellers, again, have still further reduced its extent; for example, Sir Gardner Wilkinson supposes the area of Thebes not to have exceeded 5 1/2 English miles. As, however, during the space of 2600 years (800 B.C.--1800 A.D.) there have been very material changes in the soil from the contraction of the habitable ground, partly by the depositions of the Nile, and partly, by the drifting of the sands, it is scarcely possible for modern travellers to determine how far Aegyptian labour and art may once have extended their capital. An author quoted by Stephanus of Byzantium, probably Hecataeus, runs into the opposite extreme, and ascribes to Thebes a population (7,000,000) hardly possible for the entire Nilevalley, and an extent (400 stadia, or 50 miles) larger than the Theban plain itself. (Steph. B. s. v. Διόσπολις.) The name of Thebes is formed from the Taped of the ancient Aegyptian language, pronounced Thaba in the Memphitic dialect of Coptic, and thence easily converted into Θῆβαι, Thebè, or Thebes. In hieroglyphics it is written AP or APE, with the feminine article, T-APE, the meaning of which is said to be head,T hebes being the heado r capital of the Upper Kingdom. Its later appellation of Diospolis Magna (Διόσπολις ἡ μεγάλη) answers also to the Aegyptian title Amunei or abode of Amun,- -Ammon or Zeus, the ram-headed god, being the principal object of worship at Thebes, The name Tapè or Thebes applied to the entire city on either bank of the Nile; but the western quarter had the distinctive name of Pathyris, or, according to Ptolemy (Ptol. 4.5.69), Tathyris, as being under the special protection of Athor, who is sometimes called the President of the West. The necropolis, indeed, on the Libyan side was appropriately placed under the guardianship of this deity, since she was believed to receive the sun in her arms as he sank behind the western hills. This quarter, again, in the age of the Ptolemies, was termed the Libyan suburb,w hich was subdivided also into particular districts, such as the Memnoneia (τὰ Μεμνονειά, Young, Hieroglyph. Literature, pp. 69, 73) and Thynabunum, where the priests of Osiris were interred. (Wilkinson, Anc. Egyptians, vol. 5. p. 387.)

The power and prosperity of Thebes arose from three sources--trade, manufactures, and religion. Its position on the Nile, near the great avenues through the Arabian hills to the Red Sea, and to the interior of Libya through the western desert, rendering it a common entrepôt for the Indian trade on the one side, and the caravan trade with the gold, ivory, and aromatic districts on the other, and its comparative vicinity to the mines which intersect the limestone borders of the Red Sea, combined to make Thebes the greatest emporium in Eastern Africa, until Alexandreia turned the stream of commerce into another channel. It was also celebrated for its linen manufacture--an important fabric in a country where a numerous priesthood was interdicted from the use of woollen garments (Plin. Nat. 9.1. s. 4). The glass, pottery, and intaglios of Thebes were also in high repute, and generally the number and magnitude of its edifices, sacred and secular, must have attracted to the city a multitude of artisans, who were employed in constructing, decorating, or repairing them. The priests alone and their attendants doubtless constituted an enormous population, for, as regarded Aegypt, and for centuries Aethiopia also, Thebes stood in the relation occupied by Rome in medieval Christendom,--it was the sacerdotal capital of all who worshipped Ammon from Pelusium to Axume, and from the Oases of Libya to the Red Sea.

The history of Thebes is not. entirely the same with that of Aegypt itself, since the predominance of the Upper Kingdom implies a very.different era in Aegyptian annals from that of the lower, or the Delta. It may perhaps be divided into three epochs: 1. The period which preceded the occupation of Lower Aegypt by the Assyrian nomades, when it is doubtful whether Memphis or Thebes were the capital of the, entire country, or whether indeed both the Thebaid and the Delta were not divided into several smaller states, such as that of Heliopolis in the N., and Abydus in the S., the rivals respectively of Memphis and Thebes. 2. The interval between the expulsion of the Assyrians by Thoutmosis, and the 21st dynasty of Tanite kings. During all this period, Thebes was unquestionably the capital of all the Nile-valley, from the Mediterranean to the island of Argo in lat. 19° 31′ N. 3. The period of decadence, when the government of Aegypt was centered in the Delta, and Thebes was probably little more than the head-quarters of the sacerdotal caste and the principal refuge of old Aegyptian life and manners. And this threefold division is rendered the more probable by the consideration that, until the Assyrian empire became formidable, and Phoenicia important from its maritime power, Aethiopia, rather than Arabia or Syria, was the formidable neighbour of Aegypt.

Under the Old Monarchy there is no trace of Aegyptian dominion extending beyond the peninsula of Sinai, the northern shores of the Red Sea, or the Libyan tribes adjoining the Delta. During this period invasion was apprehended almost exclusively from the S. The Aethiopians were no less warlike, and perhaps as civilised, as the Aegyptians: the Nile afforded them direct ingress to the regions north of the Cataracts, and they were then, as the Syrians and north-eastern states became afterwards, the immediate objects of war, treaties, or intermarriages with the Pharaohs of Thebes. When the Theban state was powerful enough to expel the Assyrian nomades, it must have already secured the alliance or the subjection of Aethiopia; and the attention of its rulers was thenceforward directed to the eastern frontier of the Lower Kingdom. Accordingly we find that while only one nome in the Thebaid and one in Middle Aegypt were assigned to the native militia, the bulk of the Calasirians and Hermobytians was permanently quartered in the Delta.

The greatness of Thebes commences with the 18th dynasty of the Pharaohs, and the immediate cause of it appears to have been the collective efforts of the Upper Country to expel the Assyrian shepherds from the Delta. The Thebaid and its capital were, probably, at no period occupied by these invaders; since, according to Manetho‘s account of the 17th dynasty, there were then two contemporaneous kingdoms in Aegypt--the Delta governed by the Hyksos, and the Thebaid by native monarchs. Thoutmosis, king of Thebes, was the principal agent in the expulsion of the intruders, and his exploits against them are commemorated on the temples at Karnak. Memphis and the Delta, together with the lesser states, such as Xois, delivered from the invaders, thenceforward were under the dominion of the kings of Thebes. Its flourishing era lasted nearly eight centuries, i. e. from about 1600 to 800 B.C.

During this period the most conspicuous monarchs. were Amenophis I., who appears, from the monuments, to have received divine honours after his decease, and to have been regarded as the second founder of the monarchy. He probably carried his arms beyond the north-eastern frontier of the Delta into Syria, and his presence in Aethiopia is recorded in a grotto at Ibrim near Aboosimbel. The victories or conquests of Amenophis in the N. and S. are inferred from the circumstance that in the sculptures he is represented as destroying or leading captive Asiatic and Aethiopian tribes. Next in succession is Thothmes I, with whose reign appears to have begun the series of Theban edifices which excited the wonder of the Greeks, who beheld them almost in their original magnificence, and of all subsequent travellers. The foundations, at least, of the palace of the kings were laid by this monarch. Thothmes also, like his predecessors, appears, from the monuments, to have made war with Assyria, and to have extended his dominion as high up the Nile as the island of Argo in upper Nubia. Thothmes II. maintained or even enlarged the realm which he inherited, since his name has been found at Gebel-el-Birkel, the Napata of the Romans, lat. 18° 30′ N. At this period Aethiopia was apparently an appanage of the Theban kingdom, and its rulers or viceroys seem to have been of the blood royal of Aegypt, since now for the first time, and until the reign of Setei Menephthah (Rosellini,i Mon. Reg. tab.xxxi.--iv.), we meet with the title of the royal son or prince of Aethiopia. The records of this reign have nearly perished; the great obelisks of Karnak, however, attest the flourishing condition of contemporary art. They were erected by Nemt Amen, the sister of Thothmes II., who appears, like the Nitocris of the Old Monarchy, to have exercised the functions of royalty. The reign of Thothmes III. is one of the most splendid in the annals of the 18th dynasty. The frontiers of Aegypt extended S. a little beyond the second cataract, and E. nearly to Mount Sinai. Thothmes III. completed in Thebes itself many of the structures begun by his predecessors, e. g. the palace of the kings,--and generally enriched the cities of the Thebaid with sumptuous buildings. He commenced the temple at Amada, which was completed by Amunoph II. and Thothmes IV; and his name was inscribed on the monuments of Ombi, Apollinopolis Magna, and Eilithya. Thebes, however, was the centre of his architectural labours, and even the ruins of his great works there have served to adorn other capital cities. In the Hippodrome of Constantinople is a mutilated obelisk of the reign of Thothmes III., which was brought from Aegypt by one of the Byzantine emperors, and which originally adorned the central court of Karnak. Again the obelisk which Pope Sixtus V. set up in front of the church of St. John Lateran at Rome, the loftiest and most perfect structure of its kind, was first raised in this reign, and bears its founder's titles on the central column of its hieroglyphics. The records of this reign are inscribed on two interesting monuments,--a painting in a tomb at Gourneh (Hoskins, Travels in Aethiopia, p. 437, foll.; Wilkinson, Mod. Egypt and Thebes, vol. 2. p. 234), and the great Tablet of Karnak, which is strictly an historical and statistical document, and which, there can be little doubt, is the very Tablet which the priests of Thebes exhibited and expounded to Caesar Germanicus in A.D. 16 (Tac. Ann. 2.60). From the paintings and the hieroglyphics, so far as the latter have been read, on these monuments, it appears that in this reign tribute was paid into the Theban treasury by nations dwelling on the borders of the Caspian sea, on the banks of the Tigris, in the kingdom of Meroe or Aethiopia, and by the more savage tribes who wandered over the eastern flank of the great Sahara. Thirteen expeditions, indeed, of Thothmes III., are distinctly registered, and the 35th year of his reign, according to Lepsius, is recorded. At this period the kingdom of Thebes must have been the most powerful and opulent in the world. Of the son of Thothmes, Amunophis II., little is known; but he also added to the erections at Thebes, and reared other monuments in Nubia. Inscriptions found at Surabit-el-Kaalim, in the peninsula of Sinai, record his name, and at Primis (Ibrim) he appears in a speos, or excavated chapel, seated with two principal officers, and receiving the account of a great chase of wild beasts.

Next in importance, though not in succession, of the Theban kings of the 18th dynasty, is Amunoph, or Amenophis III. His name is found at Toumbos, near the third Cataract, and he permanently extended the frontiers of the Theban kingdom to Soleb, a degree further to S. than it had hitherto reached. These extensions are not only geographically, but commercially, important, inasmuch as the farther southward the boundaries extended, the nearer did the Aegyptians approach to the regions which produced gold, ivory, gems, and aromatics, and the more considerable, therefore, was the trade of Thebes itself. Only on the supposition that it was for many generations one of the greatest emporiums in the world can we understand the lavish expenditure of its monarchs, and its fame among northern nations as the greatest and richest of cities. And this consideration is the more important towards a correct estimate of the resources of the Theban kingdom, since its proper territory barely sufficed for the support of its dense population, and there is no evidence of its having any remarkable traffic by sea. It is probable, indeed, that the dominions of Amenophis III. stretched to within five days' journey of Axume on the Red Sea; for a scarabaeus inscribed with his name and that of his wife Taia mentions the land of Karoei or Kaloei, supposed to be Coloe (Rosellini, Mon. Stor. 3.1, 261; Birch, Gall. Brit. Mus. p. 83), as their southern limit. Thebes was enriched by this monarch with two vast palaces, one on the eastern, the other on the western bank of the Nile. He also commenced and erected the greater portion of the buildings at Luxor. On the walls of their chambers Amenophis was designated The vanquisher of the Mennahoun,a n unknown people, and the Pacificator of Aegypt.F rom the fragment of a monolithal granite statue now in the Louvre, it may be inferred that his victories were obtained over negro races, and consequently were the results of campaigns in the interior of Libya and the S. of Aethiopia. Amenophis has a further claim to notice, since he was probably the Memnon, son of Aurora, whom Achilles slew at the siege of Troy. Of all the Aethiopian works the Memnonian statues, from their real magnitude and from the fabulous stories related of them, have attracted the largest share of attention. By the word Memnon the Greeks understood an Aethiopian or man of dark complexion (Steph. B. s. v.; Agathem. ap. Gr. Geograph. Min. ), or rather, perhaps, a dark-complexioned warrior (comp. Eustath. ad Il. 5.639); and the term may very properly have been applied to the conqueror of the southern land, who was also hereditary prince of Aethiopia. The statues of Memnon, which now stand alone on the plain of Thebes, originally may have been the figures at the entrance of the long dromos of crio-sphinxes which led up to the Amenopheion or palace of Amenophis. Of the eastern and northern limits of the Theban kingdom under the third Amenophis, we have no evidence similar to that afforded by the tablet of Karnak; yet from the monuments of his battles we may infer that he levied tribute from the Arabians on the Red Sea and in the peninsula of Sinai, and at one time pushed his conquests as far as Mesopotamia. According to Manetho he reigned 31 years: his tomb is the most ancient of the sepulchres in the Bab-el-Melook; and even so late as the Ptolemaic age he had divine honours paid him by a special priest-college called The pastophori of Amenophis in the Memnoneia.( Kenrick, Ancient Aegypt, vol. 2. p. 246.)

Setei Menephthah is the next monarch of the 18th dynasty who, in connection with Thebes, deserves mention. Besides the temples which he constructed at Amada in Nubia and at Silsilis (Silseleh, ) he began the great palace. called Menephtheion in that city, although he left it to be completed by his successors Rameses II. and III. From the paintings and inscriptions on the ruins at Karnak and Luxor it appears that this monarch triumphed over five Asiatic nations as well as over races whose position cannot be ascertained, but whose features and dress point to the interior of Libya. The tomb and sarcophagus of Setei Menephthah were discovered by Belzoni in the Bab-el-Melook. (Travels, vol. 1. p. 167.) If he be the same with the Sethos of the lists, he reigned 50 or 51 years. We now come to the name of Rameses II. and III., the latter of whom is the Sesostris of Herodotus, and who may therefore be regarded as a clearly historical personage. There can be no doubt of the greatness of Thebes under his sceptre. In this, as in many other instances where Aegypt is concerned, the monuments of the country enable us to approach the truth, while the credulity of the Greek travellers and historians in accepting the narrations of the Aegyptian priests--naturally eager, after their subjection by the Persians, to exalt their earlier condition--only tends to bewilder and mislead. Thus, for example, Diodorus (Diod. 1.54) was informed that Sesostris led into the field 600,000 infantry, 24,000 cavalry, and 27,000 chariots; and he appeals to the passage already cited from Homer to show that Thebes sent so many chariots out of its hundred gates. There is no evidence that the Aegyptians then possessed a fleet in the Mediterranean; yet Diodorus numbers among his conquests the Cyclades, and Dicaearchus (Schol. in Apoll. Rhod. 4.272) assigns to him the greater part of Europe.T he monuments, on the contrary, record nothing so incredible of this monarch; although if we may infer the extent of his conquests and the number of his victories from the space occupied on the monuments by their pictorial records, he carried the arms of Aegypt beyond any previous boundaries, and counted among his subjects races as various as those which, nearly 17 centuries later, were ruled by Trajan and the Antonines. The reign of Rameses was of 60 years' duration, that is nearly of equal length with his life, for the first of his victories--that recorded on the propylaea of the temple of Luxor, and much more fully on those of Aboosimbel --was gained in his fifth year. We must refer to works professedly dealing with Aegyptian annals for his hisotry: here it will be sufficient to observe of Rameses or Sesostris that he added to Thebes the Rameseion, now generally admitted to be the monument of Osymandyas,u pon the western bank of the Nile; that he was distinguished from all his predecessors by the extent of his conquests and the wisdom of his laws; and among his subjects for his strength, comeliness, and valour. The very pre-eminence of Rameses III. has, indeed, obscured his authentic history. To him were ascribed many works of earlier and of later monarchs,--such as the canal of the Pharaohs, between the Nile and the Red Sea; the dykes and embankments which rendered the Delta habitable; the great wall, 1500 stadia in length, between Pelusium and Heliopolis, raised as a barrier against the Syrians and Arabians; a re-partition of the land of Aegypt; the law of hereditary occupation (Aristot. Pol. 7.10); and foreign conquests, or at least expeditions into Western Asia, which rendered tributary to him even the Colchians and the Bactrians. (Tac. Ann. 2.60.)

With the 21st dynasty appear the traces of a revolution affecting the Upper Kingdom. Tanite and Bubastite Pharaohs are now lords of the Nile-valley: and these are succeeded by an Aethiopian dynasty, marking invasion and occupation of the Thebaid by a foreigner. Perhaps, as Aegypt became more involved with the affairs of Asia--a result of the conquests of the house of Rameses--it may have proved expedient to remove the seat of government nearer to the Syrian frontier. The dynasty of Sethos, the Aethiopian, however, indicates a revolt of the provinces S. of the cataracts; and even after the Aethiopians had withdrawn, the Lower Kingdom retained its pre-eminence. The Saite Pharaohs feared or despised the native militia, and surrounded themselves with foreign mercenaries. Greek colonies were established in the Delta; and Aegypt maintained a fleet--an innovation extremely prejudicial to Thebes, since it implied that the old isolation of the land was at an end, and that the seat of power was on the Syrian, and not on the Aethiopian frontier. The stages of its decline cannot be traced; but Thebes seems to have offered no opposition, after the fall of Memphis, to the Persians, and certainly, after its occupation by Cambyses, never resumed its place as a metropolitan city. That Thebes was partially restored after the destruction of at least its secular buildings by the Persians, admits of no doubt, since it was strong enough in B.C. 86 to hold out against the forces of Ptolemy Lathyrus. But although the circuit of its walls may have been undiminished, it seems never again to have been filled as before with a dense population. The foundation of Alexandreia was more fatal to Thebes than even the violence of Cambyses; and its rebellion against the Macedonians was perhaps prompted by jealousy of Greek commerce and religion. The hand of Lathyrus lay heavy on Thebes; and from this epoch probably dates the second stage of its decline. From the glimpses we gain of it through the writings of the Greeks and Romans, it appears to have remained the head-quarters of the sacerdotal order and of old Aegyptian life and manners. As a Macedonian or Roman prefecture, it took little or no part in the affairs of Aegypt; yet it profited by the general peace of the world under the Caesars, and employed its wealth or labour in the repair or decoration of its monuments. The names of Alexander and some of the Ptolemies, of the Caesars from Tiberius to the Antonines, are inscribed on its monuments; and even in the fourth century A.D. it was of sufficient importance to attract the notice of historians and travellers. Perhaps its final ruin was owing as much to the fanaticism of the Christians of the Thebaid, who saw in its sculptures only the abominations of idol-worship, as to its occupation by the Blemmyes and other barbarians from Nubia and Arabia. When the Saracens, who also were iconoclasts, broke forth from Arabia, Thebes endured its final desolation, and for many centuries its name almost disappears: nor can its monuments be said to have generally attracted the notice of Europeans, until the French expedition to Aegypt once again disclosed its monuments. From that period, and especially since the labours of Belzoni, no ancient city has been more frequently visited or described.

The growth of Thebes and the additions made to it by successive monarchs or dynasties have been partly traced in the foregoing sketch of its political history. A few only of its principal remains can here be noticed, since the ruins of this city form the subject of many works, and even the most condensed account of them would almost demand a volume for itself. Ancient Thebes, as has already been observed, occupied both the eastern and western banks of the Nile; and four villages, two, on each side of the river, now occupy a portion of its original area. Of these villages two, Luxor and Karnak, are on the eastern bank, and two, Gourneh and Medinet-Aboo, on the western. There is some difference in the character and purpose of the structures in the opposite quarters of the city. Those on the western bank formed part of its vast necropolis; and here are found the rock-hewn painted tombs,--the tombs of the kings,- -whose sculptures so copiously illustrate the history, the arts, and the social life of Aegypt. On this side there are also the remains of temples, palaces, and halls of assembly or judicature, with their vast enclosure of walls and their long avenues of sphinxes. But the western quarter of Thebes was reserved principally for the dead, and for the service of religion and the state, while the mass of the population was contained in the eastern. Yet the numbers who inhabited the western side of the city must have been considerable, since each temple had its own establishment of priests, and each palace or public edifice its proper officers and servants. Still we shall probably be correct in describing the eastern quarter as the civil, and the western as the royal and ecclesiastical, portion of Thebes. At present no obelisks have been discovered in the western quarter, but, with this exception, the monuments of Gourneh and Medinet-Aboo yield little in grandeur, beauty, or interest to those of Luxor and Karnak, and in one respect indeed are the more important of the two, since they afford the best existing specimens of Aegyptian colossal or portrait statues.

Beginning then with the western quarter,--the Memnoneia of the Ptolemaic times,--we find at the northern limit of the plain, about three quarters of a mile from the river, the remains of a building to which Champollion has given the name of Menephtheion, because the name of Setei-Menephthah is inscribed upon its walls. It appears to have been both a temple and a palace, and was approached by a dromos of 128 feet in length. Its pillars belong to the oldest style of Aegyptian architecture, and its bas-reliefs are singularly fine.

The next remarkable ruin is the Memnoneium of Strabo (17. p. 728), the tomb of Osymandyas of Diodorus, now commonly called the Rameseion on the authority of its sculptures. The situation, the extent, and the beauty of this relic of Thebes are all equally striking. It occupies the first base of the hills, as they rise from the plain; and before the alluvial soil had encroached on the lower ground, it must have been even a more conspicuous object from the city than it now appears. The inequalities of the ground on which it was erected were overcome by flights of steps from one court to another, and the Rameseion actually stood on a succession of natural terraces improved by art. The main entrance from the city is flanked by two pyramidal towers: the first court is open to the sky, surrounded by a double colonnade, and 140 feet in length and 18 in breadth. On the left of the staircase that ascends to the second court still stands the pedestal of the statue of Rameses, the largest, according to Diodorus (Diod. 1.49), of the colossi of Aegypt. From the dimensions of its foot, parts of which still remain, it is calculated that this statue was 54 feet in height and 22 feet 4 inches in breadth across the shoulders. The court is strewn with its fragments. How it was erected, or how overthrown in a land not liable to earthquakes, are alike subjects of wonder; since, without mechanical aids wholly beyond the reach of barbarians, it must have been almost as difficult to cast it down from its pedestal as to transport it originally from the quarries. The walls of the second court are covered with sculptures representing the wars of Rameses III., a continuation and complement of the historical groups upon the interior walls of the pylon. Diodorus (Diod. 1.47) speaks of monolithal figures, 16 cubits high, supplying the place of columns,a nd these are probably the pillars of this second court. He also mentions the attack of a city surrounded by a river; and this group of sculpture, still extant, identifies the Memnoneium with the monument of Osymandyas. A third flight of stairs conducts from the court to a hall, which, according to Champollion was used for public assemblies. A sitting statue of Rameses flanked each side of the steps, and the head of one of them, now called the young Memnon adorns the British Museum. The columns and walls of the court are covered with sculptures partly of a religious, partly of a civil character, representing the homage of the 23 sons of Rameses to their parent and his offerings to the gods. Nine smaller apartments succeed to the hall. One of these was doubtless the library or Dispensary of the Mind( ψυχῆς ἰατρεῖον) of which Diodorus (Diod. 1.49) speaks, since in it are found sculptures of Thoth, the inventor of letters, and his companion Saf, the lady of lettersa nd President of the Hall of Books.T his chamber had also at one time an astronomical ceiling adorned with the figures or symbols of the Aegyptian months; but it was carried off by the Persians, and the Greek travellers, Diodorus, Hecataeus &c., knew of it only from hearsay. Of the nine original chambers, two only remain, the one just described, and a second, in which Rameses is depicted sacrificing to various divinities of the Theban Pantheon. Beneath the upper portion of the Memnoneium rock-sepulchres and brick graves have been discovered, both coeval with the Rameseian dynasty (Lepsius, Rev. Arch. Jan. 1845). The entire area of the Memnoneium was enclosed by a brick wall, in the double arches of which are occasionally imbedded fragments of still more ancient structures, the remains probably of the Thebes which the 18th dynasty of the Pharaohs enlarged, and adorned. A dromos NW. of the Memnoneium, formed of not less than 200 sphinxes, and at least 1600 feet in length, led to a very ancient temple in a recess of the Libyan hills. This was probably a place of strength before the lowlands on each side of the Nile were artificially converted by drainage and masonry into the solid area upon which Thebes was built.

The next object which meets the traveller's eye is a mound of rubbish, the fragments of a building once. occupying the ground. It is called by the Arabs Koum-el-Hattam, or mountain of sandstone, and is, composed of the ruins of the Amenopheion, the palace or temple of Amunoph III.--the Memnon of the Greeks. About a quarter of a mile distant from the Amenopheion, and nearer to the Nile, are the two colossal statues called Tama and Chama by the natives, standing isolated on the plain and eminent above it. The most northerly of these statues is the celebrated vocal Memnon. Their present isolation, however, is probably accidental, and arises from the subsidence or destruction of an intermediate dromos, of which they formed the portals, and which led to the Amenopheion, These statues have already been, described in the Dictionary of Biography, s. v. MEMNON [Vol. 2. p. 1028.] It may be added here that the present height of these colossal figures, inclusive of the pedestal, is 60 feet. The alluvial soil, however, rises to nearly one half of the pedestal, and as there is an inscription of the age of Antoninus Pius, A.D. 139, foll., i. e. about 1720 years old, we obtain some measure of the amount of deposition in so many centuries. The blocks from which the statues are formed are composed of a coarse, hard breccia, intermixed with agatised pebbles. (Russegger, Reisen, vol. ii. pt. 1. p. 410.) The village of Medinet-Aboo stands about one third of a mile SW. of Koum-el-Hattam, upon a lofty mound formed by the ruins of the most splendid structure in western Thebes. It consisted of two portions, a temple and a palace, connected with each other by a pylon and a dromos. The temple was the work of successive monarchs of the name of Thothmes, and hence has received the name of the Thothmeseion. Apparently this site found favour with the sovereigns of Aegypt in all ages, since, either on the main building or on its numerous outworks, which extend towards the river, are inscribed the names of Tirhakah the Aethiopian, of Nectanebus, the last independent king of Aegypt, of Ptolemy Soter II., and of Antoninus Pius. The original Thothmeseion comprises merely a sanctuary surrounded by galleries and eight chambers; the additions to it represent the different periods of its patrons and architects. The palace of Rameses--the southern Rameseion of Champollion--far exceeds in dimensions and the splendour of its decorations the Thothmeseion. It stands a little S. of the temple, nearer the foot of the hills. The dromos which connects them is 265 feet in length. The sculptures on the pylon relate to the coronation of Rameses IV. and his victories over the Aethiopians. A portion of the southern Rameseion seems to have been appropriated to the private uses of the king. The mural decorations of this portion are of singular interest, inasmuch as they represent Rameses in his hours of privacy and recreation.

The walls of the southern Rameseion generally are covered both on the inside and the out with representations of battles, sacrifices, religious processions and ceremonies, relating to the 18th dynasty. A plain succeeds, bounded by sand-hills and heaps of Nile-mud. It is variously described by modern travellers as the site of a race-course, of a camp or barrack, or an artificial lake, over which, according to Sir Gardner Wilkinson, the dead were ferried to the neighbouring necropolis. Whatever may have been its purpose, this plain is of considerable extent, being somewhat less than a mile and half in length, and more than half a mile in breadth.

The contrast between the portion of Thebes once crowded with the living, and that which was equally thronged with the dead, is less striking now, when the whole city is a desert or occupied only by a few straggling villages. But under the Pharaohs the vicinity of life and death must have been most solemn and expressive. From Gourneh to Medinet-Aboo the Libyan hills, along a curve of nearly 5 miles, are honey-combed with sepulchres, and conspicuous among them are the Tombs of the Kings, situated in the valley of Bab-el-Melook. The Theban necropolis is excavated in the native calcareous rock. The meaner dead were interred in the lower ground, where the limestone is of a softer grain, and more exposed to decomposition by wind and water. This portion of the cemetery has, accordingly, fallen into decay. But the upper and harder strata of the hills are of finer and more durable texture, and here the priest-caste and nobles were interred. The tombs of the lower orders are generally without sculpture, but filled with mummies of animals accounted sacred by the Aegyptians. A favourite companion in death appears to have been the ape; and such numbers of this animal have been found in one portion of the necropolis that the valley containing their mummies bears the name of the Apes' Burial Place.U pon the graves of the upper classes painting and sculpture were lavished in a measure hardly inferior to that which marks the sepulchres of the kings. The entire rock is tunnelled by them, and by the galleries and staircases which led to the various chambers. The entrances to these tombs are rectangular, and open into passages which either pierce the rock in straight lines, or wind through it by ascending and descending shafts. Where the limestone is of a crumbling nature, it was supported by brick arches, and drains were provided for carrying off standing or casual water. The walls of these passages and chambers were carefully prepared for the artist. Rough or carious portions were cut out, and their place filled up with bricks and plaster. Their entire surface was then covered with stucco, on which the paintings were designed and highly coloured. The decorations are rarely in relief, but either drawn on the flat surface, or cut into the stucco. They are mostly framed in squares of chequer and arabesque work. The subjects portrayed within these frames or niches are very various,--ranging through religious ceremonies and the incidents of public or private life. The ornaments of these tombs may indeed be termed the miniature painting of the Aegyptians. Within a space of between 40 and 50 feet no less than 1200 hieroglyphics are often traced, and finished with a minute delicacy unsurpassed even in buildings above ground, which were meant for the eyes of the living.

The Royal Sepulchres, however, form the most striking feature of the Theban necropolis. They stand in a lonely and barren valley, seemingly a natural chasm in the limestone, and resembling in its perpendicular sides and oblong shape a sarcophagus. At the lower end of this basin an entrance has been cut--there seems to be no natural mode of ingress--in the rock. Forty-seven tombs were, at one time, known to the ancients. (Diod. 1.46.) Of these twenty or twenty-one have been counted by modern explorers. Here reposed the Theban Pharaohs from the 18th to the 21st dynasty. The only tombs, hitherto discovered, complete are those of Amunoph III., Rameses Meiamun, and Rameses III. To prepare a grave seems to have been one of the duties or pleasures of Aegyptian royalty; and since the longest survivor of these monarchs rests in the most sumptuous tomb, it may be inferred that the majority of them died before they had completed their last habitation.

The queens of Aegypt were buried apart from the kings, in a spot about three-fourths of a mile NW. of the temple of Medinet-Aboo. Each of them bears the title of Wife of Amun,i ndicating either that their consorts combined with their proper names that also of the great Theban deity, or that, after death, they were dignified by apotheosis. Twenty-four tombs have at present been discovered in this cemetery, twelve of which are ascertained to be those of the queens. The least injured of them by time or violence bears the name of Taia, wife of Amunoph III.

On the eastern bank of the Nile, the monuments are even more magnificent. The villages of Luxor and Karnak occupy a small portion only of the true Diospolis. The ruins at Luxor stand close to the river. The ancient landing place was a jetty of stone, which also served to break the current of the stream. The most remarkable monuments are two obelisk of Rameses III., respectively 70 and 60 feet high, one of which still remains there, while the other has been removed to the Place de la Concorde at Paris. Their unequal height was partially concealed from the spectator by the lower obelisk being placed upon the higher pedestal. Behind them were two monolithal These are now covered from the breast downwards with rubbish and fluvial deposit, but were, originally, including their chairs or bases, 39 feet high. Next succeeds a court, surrounded by a corridor of double columns, 190 feet long and 170 broad. It is entered through a portal 51 feet in height, whose pyramidal wings are inscribed with the battles of Rameses. On the opposite side of the court a second portal, erected by Amunoph III., opens upon a colonnade which leads to a smaller court, and this again terminates with a portico composed of four rows of columns, eight in each row. Beyond the third portico follows a considerable number of apartments. flanking a sanctuary on the walls of which are represented the birth of Amunoph, and his presentation to Amun.

A dromos of andro-sphinxes, and various buildings now covered with sand and dried mud, formerly connected the quarter of eastern Thebes, represented by Luxor, with that represented by Karnak. Near to the latter place a portion of the dromos still exists, and a little to the right of it a second dromos of crio-sphinxes branches off, which must have been one of the most remarkable structures in the city. It led up to the palace of the kings, and consisted of a double row of statues, sixty or seventy in number, each 11 feet distant from the next, and each having a lion's body and a ram's head. The SW. entrance of the palace is a lofty portal, followed by four spacious courts with intervening gateways.

The grandeur of the palace is, in some degree, lessened by later additions to its plan, for on the right side of the great court was a cluster of small chambers, while on its left were only two apartments. Their object is unknown, but they probably served as lodgings or offices for the royal attendants. In the first of the two main courts stand two obelisks of Thothmes I., one in fragments, the other still erect and uninjured. In a second court to the right of the first, there were two obelisks also: the one which remains is 92 feet high. The oldest portion of the palace of Karnak appears to be a few chambers, and some polygonal columns bearing the shield of Sesortasen I. To these--the nucleus of the later structures--Thothmes III. made considerable additions; among them a chamber whose sculptures compose the great Karnak Tablet, so important a document for Aegyptian chronology.

But the Great Court is surpassed in magnificence by the Great Hall. This is 80 feet in height, and 329 feet long by 179 broad. The roof is supported by 134 columns, 12 in the centre and 122 in the aisles. The central columns are each 66 feet high, clear of their pedestals, and each 11 feet in diameter. The pedestals were 10 feet high, and the abacus over their capitals, on which rested the architraves of the ceiling, was 4 feet in depth. The columns were each about 27 feet apart from one another. The aisle-columns stood in 7 rows, were each 41 feet high, and 9 feet in girth Light and air were admitted into the building through apertures in the side walls. The founder of the palace was Setei-Menephthah, of the 18th dynasty; but one reign cannot have sufficed for building so gigantic a court, and we know indeed not only that many of the historical bas-reliefs which cover the walls were contributed by his son Rameses II., but also that the latter added to the Great Hall, on its NW. side, a vast hypethral court, 275 feet in breadth, by 329 in length. This, like the hall, had a double row of columns down its centre, and a covered corridor round its sides. Four gateways opening to the four quarters gave admission into this court: and to the prineipal one which fronted the Nile an avenue of crio-sphinxes led up, headed by two granite statues of Rameses II.

The purpose for which these spacious courts and their annexed halls and esplanades were erected was perhaps partly religious, and partly secular. Though the kings of the 18th and succeeding dynasties had ceased to be chief-priests, they still retained many ceremonial functions, and the sacred calendar of Aegypt abounded in days of periodical meetings for religious objects. At such panegyries the priests alone were a host, and the people were not excluded. From the sculptures also it appears that the Court of Royal Palaces was the place where troops were reviewed, embassies received, captives executed or distributed, and the spoils or honours of victory apportioned. Both temples and palaces also served occasionally for the encampment of soldiers and the administration of justice. The temperature of the Thebaid rendered vast spaces indispensable for the congregation of numbers, and utility as well as pomp may have combined in giving their colossal scale to the structures of the Pharaohs.

In the Great Hall a great number of the columns are still erect. The many which have fallen have been undermined by water loosening the soil below: and they fall the more easily, because the architraves of the roof no longer hold them upright. The most costly materials were employed in some parts of the palace. Cornices of the finest marble were inlaid with ivory mouldings or sheathed with beaten gold.

These were the principal structures of the eastern moiety of Thebes: but either dromoi and gateways stand within the circuit of its walls, and by their sculptures or inscriptions attest that the Macedonian as well as the native rulers extended, renovated, or adorned the capital of the Upper Country. The eastern branch of the dromos which connects Luxor with Karnak appears from its remains to have been originally 500 feet in length, and composed of a double row of ram-headed lions 58 in number. The loftiest of Aegyptian portals stands at its SW. extremity. It is 64 feet high, but without the usual pyramidal propyla. It is indeed a work of the Greek era, and was raised by Ptolemy Euergetes I. Rameses IV. and Rameses VIII. added temples and a dromos to the city. Nor was Thebes without its benefactors even so late as the era of the Roman Caesars. The name of Tiberius was inscribed on one of its temples; and Hadrian, while engaged in his general survey of the Empire, directed some repairs or additions to be made to the temple of Zeus-Ammon. That Thebes, as Herodotus and Diodorus saw it, stood upon the site and incorporated the remains of a yet more ancient city, is rendered probable by its sudden expansion under the 18th dynasty of the Pharaohs, as well as by extant specimens of its architecture, more in affinity with the monuments S. of the cataracts than with the proper Aegyptian style. It seems hardly questionable that Thebes was indebted for its greatness originally to its being the principal centre of Ammon-worship,--a worship which, on the one hand, connected it with Meroe, and, on the other, with the islands of the Libyan desert. The strength which the Thebaid and its capital thus acquired not only enabled it to rise superior to Abydus in the earlier period, but also to expel the Assyrian invaders from the Delta. It becomes then an interesting question which quarter of Thebes was its cradle? Did it spread itself from the eastern or the western shore of the Nile? Both Diodorus and Strabo are agreed in placing the old town,w ith its Ammonian temple, on the eastern bank of the river; and this site too was the more accessible of the two, whether its population came from the left or, as it is more likely they did, from the right shore. Between Luxor and Karnak lies the claim to be considered as the site of the earliest Diospolis. Now in the former place there is no conspicuous trace of Ammon-worship, whereas the latter, in its ram-headed dromoi, abounds with symbols of it. At Karnak every monument attests the presence of Ammon. Osiris indeed appears as his son or companion on the sculptures, and in some of the temple-legends they were represented as joint founders of the shrine. But Ammon was without doubt the elder of the two. We may accordingly infer that the first Thebes stood nearly on the site of the present Karnak, at a period anterior to all record: that it expanded towards the river, and was separated by the whole breadth of the stream and of the plain to the foot of the Libyan hills from the necropolis. Finally, that as its population became too large for the precincts of the eastern plain, a suburb, which grew into a second city, arose on the opposite bank of the Nile; and thus the original distinction between eastern and western Thebes partially disappeared, and the river, having thenceforward habitations on both its banks, no longer parted by a broad barrier the city of the living from the city of the dead.

(Kenrick, Ancient Aegypt under the Pharaohs, vol. i. pp. 149--178; Heeren, Historical Researches, Thebes and its Monuments, vol. ii. pp. 201--342; Champollion, Lettres sur l'Egypte; Hamilton, Aegyptiaca; Belzoni, Travels, &c. )

The territory of Thebes was named THEBAIS(ἡ Θηβαΐς, sc. χώρα, or οἱ ἄνω τόποι, the Upper Country, Ptol. 4.5.62), the modern Sais or Pathros, and was one of the three principal divisions of Aegypt. Its frontiers to the S. varied accordingly as Aegypt or Aethiopia preponderated, the Theban Pharaohs at times ruling over the region above the Cataracts as far S. as Hiera Sycamina lat. 23° 6′ N.; while, at others, the kings of Meroe planted their garrisons N. of Syene, and, at one period, occupied the Thebais itself. But the ordinary limits of Upper Aegypt were Syene to S., lat. 24° 5′ N., and Hermopolis Magna to N., lat. 27° 45′ N. On the E. it was bounded by the Arabian, on the W. by the Libyan hills and desert. As rain seldom falls in the Thebais (Hdt. 3.10), and as its general surface is rocky or sandy, the breadth of cultivable land depends on the alluvial deposit of the Nile, and this again is regulated by the conformation of the banks on either side. For a similar cause the population of the Thebais was mostly gathered into towns and large villages, both of which are often dignified by ancient writers with the appellation of cities. But numerous cities were incompatible with the physical character of this region, and its population must have been considerably below the estimate of it by the Greeks and Romans.

The Thebais was divided into ten nomes (Strab. 17. p. 787), and consequently ten halls in the Labyrinth were appropriated to its Nonarchs. But this number apparently varied with the boundaries of Upper Aegypt, since Pliny (Plin. Nat. 5.9) enumerates eleven. and other writers mention fourteen Nomes. The physical aspect of the Thebais requires especial notice, since it differed, both geologically and in its Fauna and Flora, from that of Lower Aegypt.

For the most part it is a narrow valley, intersected by the river and bounded by a double line of hills, lofty and abrupt on the eastern or Arabian side, lower and interrupted by sandy plains and valleys on the Libyan or western. The desert on either side produces a stunted vegetation of shrubs and herbs, which emit a slight aromatic odour. The cultivable soil is a narrow strip on each side of the Nile, forming, with its bright verdure, a strong contrast to the brown and arid hue of the surrounding district. The entire breadth of this valley, including the river, does not exceed 11 miles, and sometimes is contracted by the rocky banks of the Nile even to two.

Upper Aegypt belongs to Nubia rather than to the Heptanomis or the Delta. Herodotus (Hdt. 3.10) was mistaken in his statement that rain never falls in the Thebais. It is, however, of rare occurrence. Showers fall annually during four or five days in each year, and about once in eight or ten years heavy rains fill the torrent-beds of the mountains, and convert the valleys on either side of the Nile into temporary pools. That this was so even in the age of Hecataeus and Herodotus is proved by the circumstance that the lions on the cornices of the Theban temples have tubes in their mouths to let the water off.

But the fertility of the Thebais depends on the overflow of the Nile. From Syene nearly to Latopolis, lat. 25° 17′ N., the cultivable soil is a narrow rim of alluvial deposit, bounded by steep walls of sandstone. On the Arabian shore were the quarries from which the great temples of Upper Aegypt were constructed. At Apollinopolis Magna (Edfu) the sandstone disappears from the W. bank of the river, and on the E. it extends but a little below that city. Four miles below Eilithya, the limestone region begins, and stretches down nearly to the apex of the Delta, descending on the Libyan side in terraces to the Mediterranean. At this point a greater breadth of land is cultivable, and in the Arabian hills deep gorges open towards the Red Sea, the most considerable of which are the valleys that run from Eilithya in a SE. direction to Berenice, and from Coptos, past the porphyry quarries, to Cosseir on the Red Sea. The tanks and stations for the caravans which the Theban Pharaohs or the Ptolemies constructed in these valleys are still occasionally found buried in the sand. At Latopolis the Nile-valley is nearly 5 miles wide, but it is again contracted by the rocks at Gebelein, where, owing to the precipitous character of the banks, the road quits the river and crosses the eastern desert to Hermonthis.

The next material expansion of the Nile-valley is at the plain of Thebes. At this point both chains of hills curve boldly away from the river, and leave an area of more than 5 miles in length and 3 in breadth. At the northern extremity of this plain the banks again contract, and at Gourneh are almost close to the Nile. Re-opening again, the borders of the stream as far as Hermopolis Magna, the northern boundary of the Thebaid, generally extend inland on the E. side about one mile and a half, on the W. about two miles. They do not indeed observe an unbroken line, but the alluvial soil, where the mouths of the collateral valleys permit, occasionally stretches much farther into the country. Canals and dykes in the Pharaonic period admitted and retained the Nile's deposit to an extent unknown either in Grecian, Roman, or modern eras.

Seen from the river the Thebaid, in the flourishing periods of Aegypt, presented a wide and animated spectacle of cultivation and industry, wherever the banks admitted of room for cities or villages. Of the scenery of the Nile, its teeming population and multitudinous river-craft, mention has already been made in the article NILUS Among many others, the following objects were beheld by those who travelled from Syene to Hermopolis. At first the general appearance of the shores is barren and dreary. Koum-Ombos, the ancient Ombi, would first arrest attention by the brilliant colours of its temples, and, at certain seasons of the year, by the festivals held in honour of the crocodile-headed deity Sevak. At times also, if we may credit the Roman satirist (Juvenal, Sat. xv.), the shore at Ombi was the scene of bloody frays with the crocodile exterminators from Tentyra. Sixteen miles below Ombi was the seat of the special worship of the Nile, which at this point, owing to the escarped form of its sandstone banks, admits of a narrow road only on either side, and seems to occupy the whole breadth of Aegypt. Here too, and on the eastern bank especially are the vast quarries of stone which supplied the Theban architects with their durable and beautiful materials. Various landing-places from the river gave access to those quarries: the names of successive sovereigns and princes of the xviiith dynasty, their wars and triumphs, are recorded on the rocks; and blocks of stone and monolithal shrines are still visible in their galleries. The temples of Apollinopolis Magna (Edfu), the hypogaea of Eilithya, Thebes occupying either bank, Coptos, long the seat of Aegyptian commerce with India, the temples of Athor and Isis at Tentyra, the mouth of the ancient branch of the Nile, the canal of Jusuf at Diospolis Parva, the necropolis of Abydos, near which runs the highroad to the greater Oasis, the linen-works and stone-masons' yards of Chemmis or Panopolis (Ekhmin), the sepulchral chambers at Lycopolis, and, finally, the superb portico of Hermopolis Magna, all evince, within a compass of about 380 miles, the wealth, enterprise, and teeming population of Upper Aegypt.

The vegetation of this region announces the approach to the tropics. The productions of the desert, stunted shrubs and trees, resemble those of the Arabian and Libyan wastes. But wherever the Nile fertilises, the trees and plants belong rather to Aethiopia than to the lower country. The sycamore nearly disappears: the Theban palm and the date-palm take its place. The lotus (Nymphaea Lotus and Nymphaea caerulea) is as abundant in the Thebais as the papyrus in the Delta. It is the symbol of the Upper Land: its blue and white cups enliven the pools and canals, and representations of them furnished a frequent and graceful ornament to architecture. Its bulb afforded a plentiful and nutritious diet to the poorer classes. The deserts of the Thebais, which in Christian times swarmed with monasteries and hermitages, contained the wolf, hyaena, and jackal: but the larger carnivorous animals of Libya were rarely seen in Aegypt. (Hdt. 2.65.) In the Pharaonic times the hippopotamus was found in the Nile below the Cataracts: more recently it has seldom been found N. of them. The crocodile, being an object of worship in several of the Theban nomes, was doubtless more abundant than it is now. From both papyri and sculptures we know that the Theban landowners possessed horned cattle and sheep in abundance, although they kept the latter for their wool and milk principally; and the chariots of Thebes attest the breeding and training of horses. From extant drawings on the monuments we know also that horticulture was a favourite occupation in Upper Aegypt.

The population of the Thebais was probably of a purer Aegyptian stamp than that of the Delta; at least its admixtures were derived from Arabia or Meroe rather than from Phoenicia or Greece. Its revolutions, too, proceeded from the south, and it was comparatively unaffected by those of the Lower Country. Even as late as the age of Tiberius, A.D. 14--37, the land was prosperous, as is proved by the extension and restoration of so many of its public monuments; and it was not until the reign of Diocletian that its rain was consummated by the inroad of the Blemmyes, and other barbarous tribes from Nubia and the Arabian desert.

[W.B.D]

THEBAE

THEBAE (Θῆβαι, orig. Θήβη, Dor. Θήβα: Eth. Θηβαῖος, fem. Θηβαΐς, Thebanus, fern. Thebais), the chief city in Boeotia, was situated in the southern plain of the country, which is divided from the northern by the ridge of Onchestus. Both these plains are surrounded by mountains, and contained for a long time two separate confederacies, of which Orchomenus in the north and Thebes in the south were the two leading cities.

I. HISTORY.

No city in Greece possessed such long continued celebrity as Thebes. Athens and Sparta, which were the centres of Grecian political life in the historical period, were poor in mythical renown; while Argos and Mycenae, whose mythical annals are full of glorious recollections, sank into comparative insignificance in historical times, and Mycenae indeed was blotted out of the map of Greece soon after the Persian wars. But in the mythical ages Thebes shone pre-eminent, while in later times she always maintained her place as the third city of Greece; and after the battle of Leuctra was for a short period the ruling city. The most celebrated Grecian legends cluster round Thebes as their centre; and her two sieges, and the fortunes of her royal houses, were the favourite subjects of the tragic muse. It was the native city of the great seer Teiresias and of the great musician Amphion. It was the reputed birthplace of the two deities Dionysus and Hercules, whence Thebes is said by Sophocles to be the only city where mortal women are the mothers of gods( οὗ δὴ μόνον τίκτουσιν αἱ θνηταὶ θεούς, Fragm. ap. Dicaearch, § 17, ed. Muller; Mure, Tour in Greece, vol. 1. p. 253.)

According to the generally received tradition, Thebes was founded by Cadmus, the leader of a Phoenician colony, who called the city CADMEIA(Καδμεία), a name which was afterwards confined to the citadel. In the Odyssey, Amphion and Zethus, the two sons of Antiope by Zeus, are represented as the first founders of Thebes and the first builders of its walls. (Od. 11.262.) But the logographers placed Amphion and Zethus lower down in the series, as we shall presently see. The legends connected with the foundation of the city by Cadmus are related elsewhere. [ Dict. of Biogr. and Myth. art. CADMUS] The five Sparti, who were the only survivors of the warriors sprung from the dragon's teeth, were the reputed ancestors of the noblest families in Thebes, which bore the name of Sparti down to the latest times. It is probable that the name of their families gave origin to the fable of the sowing of the dragon's teeth. It appears certain that the original inhabitants of Thebes were called Cadmeii (Καδμεῖοι, Il. 4.388, 391, 5.807, 10.288, Od. 11.276) or Cadmeiones (Καδμείωνες, Il. 4.385, 5.804, 23.680), and that the southern plain of Boeotia was originally called the Cadmeian land (Καδμηΐς γῆ, Thuc. 1.12). The origin of these Cadmeians has given rise to much dispute among modern scholars. K. O. Müller considers Cadmus a god of the Tyrrhenian Pelasgians, and maintains that the Cadmeians are the same as the Tyrrhenian Pelasgians; Welcker endeavours to prove that the Cadmeians were a Cretan colony; while other writers adhere to the old traditions that the Cadmeians were Phoenicians who introduced the use of letters into Greece. (Müller, Orchomenos, p. 111, seq., 2nd ed.; Thirlwall, Hist. of Greece, vol. 1. p. 111.) It is useless, however, to enter into the discussion of a subject respecting which we possess no materials for arriving at a satisfactory conclusion. It is certain that the Greeks were indebted to the Phoenicians for their alphabet; but whether the Cadmeians were a Phoenician colony or some other race must be left uncertain.

But we must return to the legendary history of Thebes. Cadmus had one son, Polydorus, and four daughters, Ino, Semele, Autonoë, and Agave, all of whom are celebrated in the mythical annals. The tales respecting them are given in the Dict. of Biogr. and Myth., and it is only necessary to mention here that Ino became the wife of Athamas and the mother of Melicertes; Semele was beloved by Zeus and became the mother of the god Dionysus; Autonoë was the mother of the celebrated hunter Actaeon, who was torn to pieces by the dogs of Artemis; and Agave was the mother of Pentheus, who, when Cadmus became old, succeeded him as king of Thebes, and whose miserable end in attempting to resist the worship of Dionysus forms the subject of the Bacchae of Euripides. After the death of Pentheus, Cadmus retired to the Illyrians, and his son Polydorus became king of Thebes. Polydorus is succeeded by his son Labdacus, who leaves at his death an infant son Laius. The throne is usurped by Lycus, whose brother Nycteus is the father of Antiope, who becomes by Zeus the mother of the twin sons, Amphion and Zethus. Nycteus having died, Antiope is exposed to the persecutions of her uncle Lycus and his cruel wife Dirce, till at length her two sons, Amphion and Zethus, revenge her wrongs and become kings of Thebes. They fortify the city; and Amphion, who had been taught by Hermes, possessed such exquisite skill on the lyre, that the stones, obedient to his strains, moved of their own accord, and formed the wall ( movit Amphion lapides canendo,Hor. Carm. 3.11). The remainder of the legend of Amphion and Zethus need not be related; and there can be no doubt, as Mr. Grote has remarked, that the whole story was originally unconnected with the Cadmeian family, as it still stands in the Odyssey, and has been interwoven by the logographers into the series of the Cadmeian myths. In order to reconcile the Homeric account of the building of the city by Amphion and Zethus with the usually received legend of its foundation by Cadmus, it was represented by later writers that, while Cadmus founded the Cadmeia, Amphion and Zethus built the lower city (τὴν τόλιν τὴν κάτω), and gave to the united city the name of Thebes. (Paus. 9.5. § § 2, 6.)

After Amphion and Zethus, Laius became king of Thebes; and with him commences the memorable story of Oedipus and his family, which is too well known to need repetition here. When Oedipus was expelled from Thebes, after discovering that he had murdered his father Laius and married his mother Jocasta, his two sons Eteocles and Polynices quarrelled for their father's throne. Their disputes led to the two sieges of Thebes by the Argive Adrastus, two of the most memorable events in the legendary history of Greece. They formed the subject of the two epic poems, called the Thebais and the Epigoni, which were considered only inferior to the Iliad and the Odyssey. Polynices, having been driven out of Thebes by Eteocles, retires to Argos and obtains the aid of Adrastus, the king of the city, to reinstate him in his rights. Polynices and Adrastus are joined by five other heroes, making the confederacy known under the name of the Seven against Thebes.T he names of these seven chiefs were Adrastus, Amphiaräus, Capaneus, Hippomedon, Parthenopaeus, Tydeus, and Polynices; but there are discrepancies in the lists, as we shall notice more fully below: and Aeschylus (Sept. c. Theb. 461) in particular omits Adrastus, and inserts Eteocles in his place. The Seven Chiefs advanced against Thebes, and each attacked one of the celebrated gates of the city. Polynices and Eteocles fell by each other's hands; and in the general engagement which followed the combat of the two brothers, the Argives were defeated, and all their chiefs slain, with the exception of Adrastus, who was saved by the swiftness of his horse Areion, the offspring of Poseidon. A few years afterwards the sons of the Seven Chiefs undertook an expedition against Thebes, to avenge their fathers' fate, hence called the war of the Epigoni or Descendants. This expedition was also led by Adrastus, and consisted of Aegialeus, son of Adrastus, Thersander, son of Polynices, Alcmaeon and Amphilochus, sons of Amphiaräus, Diomedes, son of Tydeus, Stheneleus, son of Capaneus, and Promachus, son of Parthenopaeus. The Epigoni gained a victory over the Cadmeians at the river Glisas, and drove them within their walls. Upon the advice of the seer Teiresias, the Cadmeians abandoned the city, and retired to the Illyrians under the guidance of Laodamas, son of Adrastus. (Apollod. 3.7.4; Hdt. 5.57--61; Paus. 9.5.13; Diod. 4.65, 66.) The Epigoni thus became masters of Thebes, and placed Thersander, son of Polynices, on the Throne. (For a full account of the legends of Thebes, see Grote, Hist. of Greece, vol. i. c. xiv.) According to the mythical chronology, the war of the Seven against Thebes took place 20 years before the Trojan expedition and 30 years before the capture of Troy; and the war of the Epigoni was placed 14 years after the first expedition against Thebes, and consequently only 4 years before the departure of the Greeks against Troy. (Clinton, F. H. vol. 1. p. 140.)

There is another important event in the mythical times of Thebes, which was not interwoven with the series of the legends already related. This is the birth of Hercules at Thebes, and the important services which he rendered to his native city by his war against Orchomenus. It was stated that the Thebans were compelled to pay tribute to Erginus, king of Orchomenus; but that they were delivered from the tribute by Hercules, who marched against Orchomenus, and greatly reduced its power (Paus. 9.37.2; Strab. 9. p. 414; Diod. 4.18). This legend has probably arisen from the historical fact, that Orchomenus was at one time the most powerful city in Boeotia, and held even Thebes in subjection.

Thebes is frequently mentioned in Homer, who speaks of its celebrated seven gates (Il. 4.406, Od. 11.263); but its name does not occur in the catalogue of the Greek cities which fought against Troy, as it was probably supposed not to have recovered from its recent devastation by the Epigoni. Later writers, however, related that Thersander, the son of Polynices, accompanied Agamemnon to Troy, and was slain in Mysia by Telephus, before the commencement of the siege; and that upon his death the Thebans chose Peneleos as their leader, in consequence of the tender age of Tisamenus, the son of Thersander. (Paus. 9.5. § § 14, 15.) In the Iliad (2.494) Peneleos is mentioned as one of the leaders of the Boeotians, but is not otherwise connected with Thebes.

According to the chronology of Thucydides, the Cadmeians continued in possession of Thebes till 60 years after the Trojan War, when they were driven out of their city and country by the Boeotians, an Aeolian tribe, who migrated from Thessaly. (Thuc. 1.12; Strab. 9. p. 401.) This seems to have been the genuine tradition; but as Homer gives the name of Boeotians to the inhabitants of the country called Boeotia in later times, Thucydides endeavours to reconcile the authority of the poet with the other tradition, by the supposition that a portion of the Aeolic Boeotians had settled in Boeotia previously, and that these were the Boeotians who sailed against Troy. According to other accounts, Thebes was taken by the Thracians and Pelasgians during the Trojan War, and its inhabitants driven into exile in Thessaly, whence they returned at a later period. (Strab. 9. p. 401; Diod. 19.53,)

Pausanias gives us a list of the kings of Thebes, the successors of Tisamenus, till the kingly dignity was abolished and a republic established in its place (9.5.16). But, with the exception of one event, we know absolutely nothing of Theban history, till the dispute between Thebes and Plataea in the latter end of the sixth century B.C.

The event to which we allude is the legislation of Philolaus, the Corinthian, who was enamoured of Diocles, also a Corinthian, and the victor in the Olympian games, B.C. 728. Both Philolaus and Diocles left their native city and settled at Thebes, where the former drew up a code of laws for the Thebans, of which one or two particulars are mentioned by Aristotle. (Pol. 2.9. § § 6, 7.) At the time when Thebes first appears in history, we find it under an oligarchical form of government, and the head of a political confederation of some twelve or fourteen Boeotian cities. The greater cities of Boeotia were members of this confederation, and the smaller towns were attached to one or other of these cities in a state of dependence. [BOEOTIA, p. 415.] The affairs of the confederation were managed by certain magistrates or generals, called Boeotarchs, of whom there were eleven at the time of the battle of Delium (B.C. 424). two being elected by Thebes, and one apparently by each of the other members of the confederation (Thuc. 4.91). But the real authority was vested in the hands of the Thebans, who used the power of the confederation with an almost exclusive view to Theban interests, and kept the other states in virtual subjection.

The first well-known event in Grecian history is the dispute, already mentioned, between Thebes and Plataea. The Plataeans, discontented with the supremacy of Thebes, withdrew from the Boeotian confederation, and surrendered their city to the Athenians. This led to a war between the Thebans and Athenians, in which the Thebans were defeated and compelled to cede to the Plataeans the territory S. of the Asopus, which was made the boundary between the two states. (Hdt. 6.108; Thuc. 3.68.) The interference of Athens upon this occasion was bitterly resented by Thebes, and was the commencement of the long enmity between the two states, which exercised an important influence upon the course of Grecian history. This event is usually placed in B.C. 519, upon the authority of Thucydides (L. C.); but Mr. Grote brings forward strong reasons for believing that it must have taken place after the expulsion of Hippias from Athens in B.C. 510. (Hist. of Greece, vol. 4. p. 222.) The hatred which the Thebans felt against the Athenians was probably one of the reasons which induced them to desert the cause of Grecian liberty in the great struggle against the Persian power. But in the Peloponnesian War (B.C. 427) the Theban orator pleaded that their alliance with Persia was not the fault of the nation, but of a few individuals who then exercised despotic power. (Thuc. 3.62.) At the battle of Plataea, however, the Thebans showed no such reluctance, but fought resolutely against the Athenians, who were posted opposite to them. (Hdt. 9.67.) Eleven days after the battle the victorious Greeks appeared before Thebes, and compelled the inhabitants to surrender their medising leaders, who were immediately put to death, without any trial or other investigation. (Hdt. 9.87, 88.) Thebes had lost so much credit by the part she had taken in the Persian invasion, that she was unable to assert her former supremacy over the other Boeotian towns, which were ready to enter into alliance with Athens, and would doubtless have established their complete independence, had not Sparta supported the Thebans in maintaining their ascendency in the Boeotian confederation, as the only means of securing the Boeotian cities as the allies of Sparta against Athens. With this view the Spartans assisted the Thebans in strengthening the fortifications of their city, and compelled the Boeotian cities by force of arms to acknowledge the supremacy of Thebes. (Diod. 11.81; Justin (Justin. 3.6.) In B.C. 457 the Athenians sent an army into Boeotia to oppose the Lacedaemonian forces in that country, but they were defeated by the latter near Tanagra. Sixty-two days after this battle (B.C. 456), when the Lacedaemonians had returned home, the Athenians, under the command of Myronides, invaded Boeotia a second time. This time they met with the most signal success. At the battle of Oenophyta they defeated the combined forces of the Thebans and Boeotians, and obtained in consequence possession of Thebes and of the other Boeotian towns. A democratical form of government was established in the different cities, and the oligarchical leaders were driven into exile. (Thuc. 1.108; Diod. 11.81.) This state of things lasted barely ten years; the democracy established at Thebes was ill-conducted (Arist. Pol. 5.2.6); and in B.C. 447 the various Boeotian exiles, combining their forces, made themselves masters of Orchomenus, Chaeroneia, and some other places. The Athenians sent an army into Boeotia under the command of Tolmides; but this general was slain in battle, together with many of his men, while a still larger number were taken prisoners. To recover these prisoners, the Athenians agreed to relinquish their power over Thebes and the other Boeotian cities. The democratical governments were overthrown; the exiles were restored; and Thebes again became the bitter enemy of Athens. (Thuc. 1.113, 3.62; Diod. 12.6.) The Thebans were indeed more anti-Athenian than were the Spartans themselves, and were the first to commence the Peloponnesian War by their attempt to surprise Plataea in the night, B.C. 431. The history of this attempt, and of the subsequent siege and capture of the city, belongs to the history of Plataea. [PLATAEA] Throughout the Peloponnesian War the Thebans continued the active and bitter enemies of the Athenians; and upon its close after the battle of Aegospotami they joined the Corinthians in urging the Lacedaemonians to destroy Athens, and sell its population into slavery. (Xen. Hill. 2.2. 19) But soon after this event the feelings of the Thebans towards Athens became materially changed in consequence of their jealousy of Sparta, who had refused the allies all participation in the spoils of the war, and who now openly aspired to the supremacy of Greece. (Plut. Lys. 27; Justin (Justin. 6.10.) They consequently viewed with hostility the Thirty Tyrants at Athens as the supporters of the Spartan power, and gave a friendly welcome to the Athenian exiles. It was from Thebes that Thrasybulus and the other exiles started upon their enterprise of seizing the Peiraeeus; and they were supported upon this occasion by Ismenias and other Theban citizens. (Xen. Hell. 2.4. 2) So important was the assistance rendered by the Thebans on this occasion that Thasybulus, after his success, showed his gratitude by dedicating in the temple of Hercules colossal statues of this god and Athena. (Paus. 9.11.6.)

The hostile feelings of Thebes towards Sparta continued to increase, and soon produced the most important results. When Agesilaus was crossing over into Asia in B.C. 397, in order to carry on war against the Persians, the Thebans refused to take any part in the expedition, and they rudely interrupted Agesilaus when he was in the act of offering sacrifices at Aulis, in imitation of Agamemnon;--an insult which the Spartan king never forgave. (Xen. Hell. 3.5. 5; Plut. Ages. 6; Paus. 3.9. § § 3--5.) During the absence of Agesilaus in Asia, Tithraustes, the satrap of Asia Minor, sent an envoy to Greece to distribute large sums of money among the leading men in the Grecian cities, in order to persuade them to make war against Sparta. But before a coalition could be formed for this purpose, a separate war broke out between Thebes and Sparta, called by Diodorus (Diod. 14.81) the Boeotian war. A quarrel having arisen between the Opuntian Locrians and the Phocians respecting a strip of border land, the Thebans espoused the cause of the former and invaded Phocis. Thereupon the Phocians invoked the aid of the Lacedaemonians, who were delighted to have an opportunity of avenging the affronts they had received from the Thebans. (Xen. Hell. 3.5. 3--5; Paus. 3.9.9.) The Lacedaemonians made active preparations to invade Boeotia. Lysander, who had been foremost in promoting the war, was to lay siege to Haliartus, under the walls of which town Pausanias was to join him on a given day with the united Lacedaemonian and Peloponnesian forces. Thus menaced, the Thebans applied for assistance to their ancient enemies, the Athenians, who readily responded to their appeal, though their city was still undefended by walls, and they had no ships to resist the maritime power of Sparta. (Xen. Hell. 3.5. 16; Dem. de Cor. p. 258.) Orchomenus, however, seized the opportunity to revolt from Thebes, and joined Lysander in his attack upon Haliartus. (Xen. Hell. 3.5. 17; Plut. Lys. 28.) The death of Lysander under the walls of Haliartus, which was followed by the retreat of Pausanias from Boeotia, emboldened the enemies of Sparta; and not only Athens, but Corinth, Argos, and some of the other Grecian states joined Thebes in a league against Sparta. In the following year (B.C. 394) the war was transferred to the territory of Corinth; and so powerful were the confederates that the Lacedaemonians recalled Agesilaus from Asia. In the month of August Agesilaus reached Boeotia on his homeward march, and found the confederate army drawn up in the plain of Coroneia to oppose him. The right wing and centre of his army were victorious, but the Thebans completely defeated the Orchomenians. who formed the left wing. The victorious Thebans now faced about, in order to regain the rest of their army, which had retreated to Mount Helicon. Agesilaus advanced to meet them; and the conflict which ensued was one of the most terrible that had yet taken place in Grecian warfare. The Thebans at length succeeded in forcing their way through, but not without great loss. This was the first time that the Thebans had fought a pitched battle with the Spartans; and the valour which they showed on this occasion was a prelude to the victories which were soon to overthrow the Spartan supremacy in Greece. (Xen. Hell. 4.3. 15--21.)

We have dwelt upon these events somewhat at. length in order to explain the rise of the Theban power; but the subsequent history must be related more briefly. After the battle of Coroneia the course of events appeared at first to deprive Thebes of the ascendency she had lately acquired. The peace of Antalcidas (B.C. 387), which was concluded under the influence of Sparta, guaranteed the independence of all the Grecian cities; and though the Thebans at first claimed to take the oath, not in their own behalf alone, but for the Boeotian confederacy in general, they were compelled by their enemy Agesilaus to swear to the treaty for their own city alone, since otherwise they would have had to contend single-handed with the whole power of Sparta and her allies. (Xen. Hell. 5.1. 32, 33.) By this oath the Thebans virtually renounced their supremacy over the Boeotian cities; and Agesilaus hastened to exert all the Spartan power for the purpose of weakening Thebes. Not only was the independence of the Boeotian cities proclaimed, and a legal oligarchy organised in each city hostile to Thebes and favourable to Sparta, but Lacedaemonian garrisons were, stationed in Orchomenus and Thespiae for the purpose of overawing Boeotia, and the city of Plataea was rebuilt to serve as an outpost of the Spartan power. (Paus. 9.1.4). A more direct blow was aimed at the independence of Thebes in B.C. 382 by the seizure of the Cadmeia, the citadel of the city, by the Spartan commander, Phoebidas, assisted by Leontiades and a party in Thebes favourable to Sparta. Though Phoebidas appears to have acted under secret orders from the Ephors (Diod. 15.20; Plut. Ages. 24), such was the indignation excited throughout Greece by this treacherous act in time of peace, that the Ephors found it necessary to disavow Phoebidas and to remove him from his command; but they took care to reap the fruits of his crime by retaining their garrison in the Cadmeia. (Xen. Hell. 5.2. 25) Many of the leading citizens at Thebes took refuge at Athens, and were received with the same kindness which the Athenian exiles experienced at Thebes after the close of the Peloponnesian War. Thebes remained in the hands of the Spartan party for three years; but in B.C. 379 the Spartan garrison was expelled from the Cadmeia, and the party of Leontiades overthrown by Pelopidas and the other exiles. The history of these events is too well known to be repeated here. In the following year (B.C. 378) Thebes formed an alliance with Athens, and with the assistance of this state resisted with success the attempts of the Lacedaemonians to reduce them to subjection; but the continued increase of the power of the Thebans, and their destruction o f the city of Plataea [PLATAEA] provoked the jealousy of the Athenians, and finally induced them to conclude a treaty of peace with Sparta, B.C. 371. This treaty, usually called the peace of Callias from the name of the leading Athenian negotiator, included all the parties in the late war with the exception of the Thebans, who were thus left to contend single-handed with the might of Sparta. It was universally believed that Thebes was doomed to destruction; but only twenty days after the signing of the treaty all Greece was astounded at the news that a Lacedaemonian army had been utterly defeated, and their king Cleombrotus slain, by the Thebans, under the command of Epaminondas, upon the fatal field of Leuctra (B.C. 371). This battle not only destroyed the prestige of Sparta and gave Thebes the ascendency of Greece, but it stript Sparta of her Peloponnesian allies, over whom she had exercised dominion for centuries, and led to the establishment of two new political powers in the Peloponnesus, which threatened her own independence. These were the Arcadian confederation and the restoration of the state of Messenia, both the work of Epaminondas, who conducted four expeditions into Peloponnesus, and directed the councils of Thebes for the next 10 years. It was to the abilities and genius of this extraordinary man that Thebes owed her position at the head of the Grecian states; and upon his death, at the battle of Mantineia (B.C. 362), she lost the pre-eminence she had enjoyed since the battle of Leuctra. During their supremacy in Greece, the Thebans were of course undisputed masters of Boeotia, and they availed themselves of their power to wreak their vengeance upon Orchomenus and Thespiae, the two towns which had been the most inimical to their authority, the one in the north and the other in the south of Boeotia. The Orchomenians had in B.C. 395 openly joined the Spartans and fought on their side; and the Thespians had withdrawn from the Theban army just before the battle of Leuctra, when Epaminondas gave permission to any Boeotians to retire who were averse to the Theban cause. (Paus. 9.13.8.) The Thespians were expelled from their city and Boeotia soon after the battle of Leuctra [THESPIAE]; and Orchomenus in B.C. 368 was burnt to the ground by the Thebans; the male inhabitants were put to the sword, and all the women and children sold into slavery. [ORCHOMENUS]

The jealousy which Athens had felt towards Thebes before the peace of Callias had been greatly increased by her subsequent victories; and the two states appear henceforward in their old condition of hostility till they were persuaded by Demosthenes to unite their arms for the purpose of resisting Philip of Macedon. After the battle of Mantineia their first open war was for the possession of Euboea. After the battle of Leuctra this island had passed under the supremacy of Thebes; but, in B.C. 358, discontent having arisen against Thebes in several of the cities of Euboea, the Thebans sent a powerful force into the island. The discontented cities applied for aid to Athens, which was readily granted, and the Thebans were expelled from Euboea. (Diod. 16.7; Dem. de Cherson. p. 108, de Cor. p. 259, c. Ctesiph. p. 397.) Shortly afterwards the Thebans commenced the war against the Phocians, usually known as the Sacred War, and in which almost all the leading states of Greece were eventually involved. Both Athens and Sparta supported the Phocians, as a counterpoise to Thebes, though they did not render them much effectual assistance. This war terminated, as is well known, by the intervention of Philip, who destroyed the Phocian towns, and restored to Boeotia. Orchomenus and the other towns which the Phocians had taken away from them, B.C. 346. The Thebans were still the allies of Philip,when the latter seized Elateia in Phocis towards the close of B.C. 339, as preparatory to a march through Boeotia against Athens. The old feeling of ill--will between Thebes and Athens still continued: Philip calculated upon the good wishes, if not the active co-operation, of the Thebans against their old enemies; and probably never dreamt of a confederation between the two states as within the range of probability. This union, however, was brought about by the eloquence of Demosthenes, who was sent as ambassador to Thebes, and who persuaded the Thebans to form an alliance with the Athenians for the purpose of resisting the ambitious schemes of Philip. In the following year (B.C. 338) Philip defeated the combined forces of Thebes and Athens at the battle of Chaeroneia, which crushed the liberties of Greece, and made it in reality a province of the Macedonian monarchy. On this fatal field the Thebans maintained the reputation they had won in their battles with the Spartans; and their Sacred Band was cut to pieces in their ranks. The battle was followed by the surrender of Thebes, which Philip treated with great severity. Many of the leading citizens mere either banished or put to death; a Macedonian garrison was stationed in the Cadmeia; and the government of the city was placed in the hands of 300 citizens, the partisans of Philip. The Thebans were also deprived of their sovereignty over the Boeotian towns, and Orchomenus and Plataea were restored, and again filled with a population hostile to Thebes. (Diod. 16.87; Justin (Justin. 9.4; Paus. 4.27.10, 9.1.8.) In the year after Philip's death (B.C. 335) the Theban exiles got possession of the city, besieged the Macedonian garrison in the Cadmeia, and invited the other Grecian states to declare their independence. But the rapidity of Alexander's movements disconcerted all their plans. He appeared at Onchestus in Boeotia, before any intelligence had arrived of his quitting the north. He was willing to allow the Thebans an opportunity for repentance; but as his proposals of peace were rejected, he directed a general assault upon the city. The Theban troops outside the gates were driven back, and the Macedonians entered the town along with them. A dreadful carnage ensued; 6000 Thebans are said to have been slain, and 30,000 to have been taken prisoners. The doom of the conquered city was referred to the Grecian allies in his army, Orchomenians, Plataeans, Phocians, and other inveterate enemies of Thebes. Their decision must have been known beforehand. They decreed that Thebes should be razed to the ground, with the exception of the Cadmeia, which was to be held by a Macedonian garrison; that the territory of the city should be divided among the allies; and that all the inhabitants, men, women, and children should be sold as slaves. This sentence was carried into execution by Alexander, who levelled the city to the ground, with the exception of the house of Pindar (Arrian, Arr. Anab. 1.8, 9; Diod. 17.12--14; Justin (Justin. 11.4.) Thebes was thus blotted out of the map of Greece, and remained without inhabitants for the next 20 years. In B.C. 315, Cassander undertook the restoration of the city. He united the Theban exiles and their descendants from all parts of Greece, and was zealously assisted by the Athenians and other Grecian states in the work of restoration. The new city occupied the same area as the one destroyed by Alexander; and the Cadmeia was held by a garrison of Cassander. (Diod. 19.52--54, 78;. Paus. 9.7.4.) Thebes was twice taken by Demetrius, first in B.C. 293, and a second time in 290, but on each occasion he used his victory with moderation. (Plut. Demetr. 39, 40; Diod. 21. p. 491, ed. Wess.)

Dicaearchus, who visited Thebes not long after its restoration by Cassander, has given a very interesting account of the city. Thebes,h e says ( § 12, seq. ed. Müller), is situated in the centre of Boeotia, and is about 70 stadia in circumference; its site is level, its shape circular, and its appearance gloomy. The city is ancient, but it has been lately rebuilt, having been three times destroyed, as history relates

Dicaearchus probably means the capture of the city by the Epigoni; secondly by the Pelasgi, during the Trojan war; and lastly by Alexander.

, on account of the insolence and haughtiness of its inhabitants. It is well adapted for rearing horses since it is plentifully provided with water, and abounds in green pastures and hills: it contains also better gardens than any other city in Greece. Two rivers flow through the town, and irrigate all the subjacent plain. There is also a subterraneous stream issuing from the Cadmeia, through pipes, said to be the work of Cadmus. Thebes is a most agreeable residence in the summer, in consequence of the abundance and coolness of the water, its large gardens, its agreeable breezes, its verdant appearance, and the quantity of summer and autumnal fruits. In the winter, however, it is a most disagreeable residence, from being destitute of fuel, and constantly exposed to floods and winds. It is then often covered with snow and very muddy.A lthough Dicaearchus in this passage gives to Thebes a circumference of 70 stadia, he assigns in his verses (Stat. Graec. 93) a much smaller extent to it, namely 43 stadia. The latter number is the more probable, and, being in metre was less likely to be altered;. but if the number in prose is correct, it probably includes the suburbs and gardens outside the city walls. Dicaearchus also gives an account of the character of the inhabitants, which is too long to be extracted. He represents them as noble-minded and sanguine, but insolent and proud, and always ready to settle their disputes by fighting rather than by the ordinary course of justice.

Thebes had its full share in the later calamities of Greece. After the fall of Corinth, B.C. 146, Mummius is said to have destroyed Thebes (Liv. Epit. 52), by which we are probably to understand the walls of the city. In consequence of its having sided with Mithridates in the war against the Romans, Sulla deprived it of half its territory, which lie dedicated to the gods, in order to make compensation for his having plundered the temples at Olympia, Epidaurus, and Delphi. Although the Romans afterwards restored the land to the Thebans, they never recovered from this blow (Paus. 9.7. § § 5, 6); and so low was it reduced in the time of Augustus and Tiberius that Strabo says that it was little more than a village (9. p. 403). In the time of the Antonines, Pausanias found the Cadmeia alone inhabited, and the lower part of the town destroyed, with the exception of the temples (9.7.6). In the decline of the Roman Empire, Thebes became the seat of a considerable population, probably in consequence of its inland situation, which afforded its inhabitants greater security than the maritime towns from hostile attacks. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries Thebes was one of the most flourishing cities in Greece, and was celebrated for its manufactures of silk. In A.D. 1040 the Thebans took the field to oppose the Bulgarian invaders of Greece, but were defeated with great loss. (Cedren. p. 747, ed. Paris., p. 529, ed. Bonn.) In A.D. 1146 the city was plundered by the Normans of Sicily, who carried off a large amount of plunder (Nicetas, p. 50, ed. Paris., p. 98, ed. Bonn.) Benjamin of Tudela, who visited Thebes about 20 years later, speaks of it as still a large city, possessing 2000 Jewish inhabitants, who were very skilful manufacturers of silk and purple cloth (1.47, ed. Asher; Fihlay, Byzantine Empire, vol. 1. p. 493, vol. 2. p. 199). The silks of Thebes continued to be esteemed even at a later period, and were worn by the emperors of Constantinople. (Nicetas, p. 297, ed. Paris., p. 609, ed. Bonn.) They were, however, gradually supplanted by those of Sicily and Italy; and the loss of the silk trade was followed by the rapid decline of Thebes. Under the Turks the city was again reduced, as in the time of Pausanias, to the site of the Cadmeia.

II. TOPOGRAPHY.

Thebes stood on one of the hills of Mount Teumessus, which divides southern Boeotia into two distinct parts, the northern being the plain of Thebes and the southern the valley of the Asopus. The Greeks, in founding a city, took care to select a spot where there was an abundant supply of water, and a hill naturally defensible, which might be easily converted into an acropolis. They generally preferred a position which would command the adjacent plain, and which was neither immediately upon the coast nor yet at a great distance from it. But as Boeotia lies between two seas, the founders of Thebes chose a spot in the centre of the country, where water was very plentiful, and where the nature of the ground was admirably adapted for defence. The hill, upon which the town stands, rises about 150 feet above the plain, and lies about 2 miles northward of the highest part of the ridge. It is bounded on the east and west by two small rivers, distant from each other about 6 or 7 stadia, and which run in such deep ravines as to form a natural defence on either side of the city. These rivers, which rise a little south of the city, and flow northward into the plain of Thebes, are the celebrated streams of Ismenus and Dirce. Between them flows a smaller stream, which divided the city into two parts, the western division containing the Cadmeia

The western division contains two eminences, and the question as to which of them was the Cadmeia will be discussed below.

, and the southern the hill Ismenius and the Ampheion. This middle torrent is called Cnopus by Leake, but more correctly Strophia (Callim. Hymn. in Del. 76) by Forchhammer. The Cnopus is a torrent flowing from. the town Cnopia, and contributing to form the Ismenus, whence it is correctly described by the Scholiast on Nicander as the same as the Ismenus. (Strab. 9. p. 404; Nicand. Theriac. 889, with Schol.) The three streams of Ismenus, Dirce, and Strophia unite in the plain below the city, to which Callimachus (l. c.) appears to allude:--

Δίρκη τε Στροφίη τε μελαμψηφῖδος ἔχουσαι Ἰσμηνοῦ χέρα πατρός.

The middle torrent is rarely mentioned by the ancient writers; and the Ismenus and Dirce are the streams alluded to when Thebes is called διπόταμος πόλις. (Eurip. Suppl. 622; comp. Phoen. 825. Bacch. 5, Herc. Fur. 572.) Both the Ismenus and Dirce, though so celebrated in antiquity, are nothing but torrents, which are only full of water in the winter after heavy rains. The Ismenus is the eastern stream, now called Ai Iánni, which rises from a clear and copious fountain, where the small church of St. John stands, from which the river derives its name. This fountain was called in antiquity Melia, who was represented as the mother of Ismenus and Tenerus, the hero of the plain which the Ismenus inundates. It was sacred to Ares, who was said to have stationed a dragon to guard it. (Callimach. Hymn. in Del. 80; Spanheim, ad loc.;Pind. P. 11.6; Paus. 9.10.5; Forchhammer, Hellenica, p. 113.) The Dirce is the western stream, now called Platziótissa, which rises from several fountains, and not from a single one, like the Ismenus. A considerable quantity of the water of the Platziótissa is now diverted to supply the fountains of the town, and it is represented as the purest of the Theban streams; and it appears to have been so regarded in antiquity likewise, judging from the epithets bestowed upon it by the poets. (Ἁγνὸν ὕδωρ, Pind. Isthm. 6.109, καλλίρροος. Isthm. 8.43; ὕδωρ Διρκαῖον εὐτραφέστατον τωμάτων, Aesch. Sept. c. Theb. 307; καλλιπόταμος, Eurip. Phoen. 647; Δίρκης νᾶμα λευκόν, Herc. Fur. 578.)

Though the position of Thebes and of its celebrated streams is certain, almost every point connected with its topography is more or less doubtful. In the other cities of Greece, which have been inhabited continuously, most of the ancient buildings have disappeared; but nowhere has this taken place more completely than at Thebes. Not a single trace of an ancient building remains; and with the exception of a few scattered remains of architecture and sculpture, and some fragments of the ancient walls, there is nothing but the site to indicate where the ancient city stood. In the absence of all ancient monuments, there must necessarily be great uncertainty; and the three writers who have investigated the subject upon the spot, differ so widely, that Leake places the ancient city to the south of the Cadmeia, and Ulrichs to the north of it, while Forchhammer supposes both the western heights between the Strophia and the Dirce to have been in a certain sense the Cadmeia, and the lower city to have stood eastward, between the Strophia and the Ismenus. In the great difficulty of arriving at any independent judgment upon the subject without a personal inspection of the site, we have adopted the hypothesis of Forchhammer, which seems consistent with the statements of the ancient writers.

The most interesting point in Theban topography is the position of the seven celebrated Theban gates. They are alluded to by Homer (Θήβης ἕδος ἑπταπύλοιο, Od, 11.263) and Hesiod (ἑπτάπυλος Θήβη, Op. 161); and their names are given by seven different authors, whose statements will be more easily compared by consulting the following table. The numeral represents the order in which the gates are mentioned by each writer. The first line gives the names of the gates, the second the names of the Argive chiefs, the third the emblems upon their shields, and the fourth the names of the Theban chiefs.

Nonnus designates five of the gates by the names. of the gods and the planets, and to the other two, to which he gives the names of Electrae and Oncaea, he also adds their position. Hyginus calls the gates by the names of the daughters of Amphion; and that of Ogygia alone agrees with those in the other writers. But, dismissing the statements of Nonnus and Hyginus, whose authority is of no value upon such a question, we find that the remaining five writers agree as to the names of all the seven gates, with two or three exceptions, which will be pointed out presently. The position of three of the gates is quite clear from the description of Pausanias alone. These are the ELECTRAE, PROETIDES, and NEITAE. Pausanias says that Electrae is the gate by which a traveller from Plataea enters Thebes (9.8.6); that there is a hill, on the right hand of the gate, sacred to Apollo, called the Ismenian, since the river Ismenus runs in this direction (9.10.2); and that on the left hand of the gate are the ruins of a house, where it was said that Amphitryon lived, which is followed by an account of other ancient monuments on the Cadmeia (9.11.1). Hence it is evident that the gate Electrae was in the south of the city, between the hills Ismenius and Cadmeia. The gate Proetides was on the north-eastern side of the city, since it led to Chalcis (9.18.1). The gate Neitae was on the north-western side of the city, since it led to Onchestus arid Delphi; and the river which Pausanias crossed, could have been no other than the Dirce (9.25. § § 1, 3, 9.26.5). The names of these three gates are the same in all the five writers: the manuscripts of Apollodorus have the corrupt word Ὀχνηΐδας, which has been altered by the editors into Ὀγχαῒδας, instead of Νήϊται, which was the reading suggested by Porson (ad. Eurip, Phoen. 1150), and adopted by Valckenaer. (See Unger, Thebana Paradoxa, vol. 1. p. 313.)

TABLE OF THE SEVEN GATES OF THEBES ACCORDING TO SEVEN WRITERS. AESCHYLUS. Sept. c. Th. 360. EURIPIDES. Phoeniss. 1120. PAUSANIAS. IX. 8.4. APOLLODORUS. III. 6.6. STATIUS. Theb. VIII. 353, sqq. NONNUS.Dionys. 5.69, sqq. HYGINUS. 69. cf. 11. 1. Προιτίδες. Τυδεύς. πανσέληνος. Μελάνιππος. 2. Προιτίδες. Ἀμφιάραος. ἄσημα ὅπλα. 2. Προιτίδες. Τυδεύς. Μελάνιππος. 3. Προιτίδες. Ἀμφιάραος. cf. III. 6, 8, 6. 4. Proetides. Hypseus. 6. Ζηνός (?). cf. Schol. Lycoph. 1204. Astycratia. 2. Ἠλέκτραι. Καπανεύς. ἄνδρα πυρφόρον. Πολυφόντης. 6. . Ἠλέκτραι. Καπανεύς. γίγας γηγενής. 1. Ἠλέκτραι. Καπανεύς. 6. Ἠλέκτραι. Παρθενοπαῖος. 5. Electrace. Dryas. 4. Ἠλέκτραι. Cleodoxa. 3. Νήϊται. Ἐτέοκλος. ἀνὴρ ὁπλίτης κλίμακ. Μεγαρεύς. 1. Νήϊται. Παρθενοπαῖος. Ἀταλάντη. 3. Νήϊται. Πωλυνείκης. (Ἐτεοκλῆς. ) 4. Νήϊται. Ἱππομέδων. 2. Neïtae. Eteocles. 2. Ἑρμάωνος (?) Astynome. 4. Ὅγκας. Ἱππομέδων. Τυφῶν πυρπνόον. Ὑπέρβιος. 5. Κρηναῖαι. Πολυνείκης. Ποτνιάδες πλοι. Ἐτεοκλῆς. 4. Κρηναῖαι. (ιππομέδων. ) 7. Κρηνίδες. Τυδεύς (?). 7. Culmina Dircaea. Menoeceus. Haemon. 10.651. 1. Ὀγκαίη (ἐς ἑδπέριον κλίμα πήξας). Chias. 5. Βορραῖαι. Παρθενοπαῖος. Σφίγξ. Ἄκτωρ. 3. Ὠγύγιαι. Ἱππομέδων. πανόπτης. 7. Ὠγύγιαι. (Παρθενοπαῖος. ) 2. Ὠγύγιαι. Καπανεύς. 1. Ogygiae. Creon. Echion, 10.494. 7. Κρόνου. Ogygia. 6. Ὁμολωΐδες. Ἀμφιάραος. σῆμα δ' οὐκ ἐπῆν. Λασθένης. 4. Ὁμολωΐδες. Τυδεύς. λέοντος δέρος. Τι τὰν Προμηθεὺς. 6. Μολωΐδες. Ἀμφιάραος (?) cf. Paus. 9.8.3. 1. ομολωΐδες. Ἄδραστος. 3. Homoloïdes. Haemon. Ἀφροδίτης. Chloris. 7 Ἔβδομαι. Πολυνείκης. Δίκη. Ἐτεοκλῆς. 7. Ἔβδομαι. Ἄδραστος. ἑκατὸν ἐχίδναι ὕδρα. 5. Ὕψισται. (Ἄδραστος.) (Διὸς ὑψίστου ἱερόν. 5. Ὕψισται. Πολυνείκης. 6. Hypsistae. Eurymedon. 5. Ἄρεως. Thera. (Νέαιρα. )

Of the other four gates, the Homoloides is also the same in all the five writers. Of the remaining three Aeschylus does not mention their proper names, but specifies two by their locality, one as near the temple of Athena Onca, and the other as the Northern gate (Βορραῖαι πύλαι), and describes the last simply as the Seventh gate. The names of these three gates are nearly the same in the other four writers, the one near the temple of Athena Onca being called Crenaeae, and in Statius Culmina Dircaea, the Northern gate Ogygiae, and the Seventh gate Hypsistae,--Euripides, however, also giving the name of Seventh to the last-mentioned gate.

Having described the position of the Electrae, Proetides, and Neitae, it remains to speak of the position of the other four, which we shall take in the order of Aeschylus. The fourth gate was probably situated on the western side of the city, and was called Crenaeae, because it was near one of the fountains of Dirce, now called Παραπόρτι, situated upon the right bank of the river. Near that fountain was a hill, called by the Greeks ὄγκος, whence Athena derived the name of Onca. Accordingly Statius, in calling the fourth gate Culmina Dircaea, connects both the fountain and the hill. Nonnus, who calls this gate Oncaea, describes it at the same time as situated towards the west. It is usually stated, on the authority of Hesychius, that the Oncaean gate is the same as the Ogygian; but this identification throws everything into confusion, while the change of three letters, proposed by Forchhammer, brings the statement of Hesychius into accordance with the other writers. (Ὄγκας Ἀθηνᾶς τὰς Ὀγκαίας [instead of Ὠγυγίας] πύλας λέγει, i. e. Aesch. Sept. c. Theb. 486.)

The fifth gate was called Ogygian from Ogygus, the most ancient king of Thebes, in whose time the deluge is said to have taken place. Now there is no part of Thebes more exposed to inundation than the north of the city between the gates Neitae and Proetides, where the torrent Strophia descends into the plain. Here we may probably place the Ogygian gate, which Aeschylus calls the Northern, from its position.

The exact position of the sixth gate, called Homoloides, and of the seventh, designated by its number in Aeschylus and Euripides, but by the name of Hypsistae in the other writers, is doubtful. Forehhammer maintains that these gates were in the southern part of the city, one on either side of the gate Electrae; but none of his arguments are conclusive; and the position of these gates must be left uncertain. Pausanias relates that, after the victory of the Epigoni at Glisas, some of the Thebans fled to Homole in Thessaly; and that the gate, through which the exiles re-entered the city, when they were recalled by Thersander, was named the Homoloides, from Homole in Thessaly (9.8. § § 6, 7). Forchhammer thinks that it would have been supposed that the exiles entered the city by the same gate by which they quitted it; and as the gate leading to Glisas must have been either in the southern or eastern side of the city, the gate Homoloides must have been on the southern side, as the Proetides lay towards the east. But this is mere conjecture; and Leake supposes, with quite as much probability, that the Homoloides was on. the north-western side of the city, since the Thebans would re-enter the city in that direction on their return from Homole.

The divisions of the city, and its monuments, of which Pausanias has given a full description, must be treated more briefly. The city, as already remarked, was divided into two parts by the torrent Strophia, of which the western half between the Strophia and the Dirce was the cadmeia, while the eastern half between the Strophia and the Ismenus PLAN OF THEBES FROM FORCHHAMMER.

1. Temple of the Ismenian Apollo.2. Melia, the fountain of the Ismenus.3. Athena Onca.4. Fountain of Dirce. Paraporli. 5. Theatre and Temple of Dionysus.6. Monument of Amphion and Zethus.7. Fountain of St. Theodore.8. Syrma Antigonae.9. House of Pindar.AA. Road to Plataea.BB. Road to Leuctra.CC. Road to Tanagra.DD. Road to Chalcis.EE. Road to Acraephnium.FF. Road to Thespiae.

was the lower city (ἡ κάτω πόλις), said to have been added by Amphion and Zethus. (Paus. 9.5. § § 2, 6.) The Cadmeia is again divided by a slight depression near the fountain of Dirce and the Crenaean. gate into two hills, of which the larger and the higher one to the south was the acropolis proper, and was called the Cadmeia κατ' ἐξοχήν, while the northern hill formed the agora of the acropolis (τῆς ἀκροπόλεως ἀγορά, Paus. 9.12.3). The eastern half of the city was also divided between the Strophia and the Ismenus into two parts, of which the southern consisted of the hill Ismenius, and the northern of several minor eminences, known under the general name of Ampheion.(Ἀμφεῖον, Arrian, Arr. Anab. 1.8.) Aeschylus describes the tomb of Amphion as standing near tile northern gate. (Βορραίαις πύλαις τύμβον κατ' αὐτὸν Διογενοῦς Ἀμφίονος, Sept. c. Theb. 528.) Hence Thebes consisted of four parts, two belonging to the acropolis, and two to the lower city, the former being the acropolis proper and the agora of the acropolis, and the latter being the hill Ismenius and the Ampheion.

Pausanias, leaving Potniae, entered Thebes on the south by the gate Electrae, before which he noticed the Polyandrium, or tomb of the Thebans who fell fighting against Alexander. (Paus. 9.8. § § 3, 4, 7, 9.10.1.) The explanation of Forchhammer that Alexander laid siege to the city on the south, and that he did not return from the gate Electrae to the Proetides, as Leake supposes, seems the most probable. Accordingly the double lines of circumvallation, which the Thebans erected against the Macedonian garrison in the Cadmeia, must have been to tile south of the city around the chief gates of the Cadmeia. (See Arrian, 1.7, 8.) Upon entering the city through the gate Electrae, Pausanias notices the hill Ismenius sacred to Apollo, named from the river Ismenus flowing by it (9.10.2). Upon the hill was a temple of Apollo, containing several monuments enumerated by Pausanias. This temple is likewise mentioned by Pindar and Herodotus, both of whom speak of the tripods situated in its treasury. (Pind. P. 11.7, seq.; Hdt. 5.59.) Above the Ismenium, Pausanias noticed the fountain of the Ismenus, sacred to Ares, and guarded by a dragon, the name of which fountain was Melia, as we have already seen 9.10.5).

Next Pausanias, beginning again from the gate Electrae, turns to the left and enters the Cadmeia (9.11.1, seq.). He does not mention the acropolis by name, but it is evident from the list of the monuments which he gives that he was in the Cadmeia. He enumerates the house of Amphitryon, containing the bedchamber of Alcmena, said to have been the work of Trophonius and Agamedes; a monument of the children of Hercules by Megara; the stone called Sophronister; the temple of Hercules (Ἡράκλειον, Arrian, Arr. Anab. 1.8); and, near it, a gymnasium and stadium, both bearing the name of this God; and above the Sophronister an altar of Apollo Spodius.

Pausanias next came to the depression between the acropolis and the agora of the Cadmeia, where he noticed an altar and statue of Athena, bearing the Phoenician surname of Onga (Ὄγγα), or Onca (Ὄγκα) according to other authorities, and said to have been dedicated by Cadmus (9.12.2). We know from Aeschylus that there was originally a temple of Athena Onca in this locality, which stood outside the city near one of the gates, whence the goddess was called ἀγχίπτολις. Some derived the name from a village named Onca or Oncae. (Aesch. Sept. c. Theb. 163, 487, 501, with Schol.; Schol. in Euripid. Phoen. 1069; Steph. B. s. v. Ὀγκαῖαι; Hesych. s. v. Ὄγκας; Schol. ad Pind. Ol. 2.39, 48; Tzetzes, ad Lyçophron. 1225; Phavorinus, s. v. Ὄγκαι.) Sophocles-also speaks of two temples of Athena at Thebes (πρὸς Παλλάδος διπλοῖς ναοῖς, Oed. Tyr. 20), in one of which, according to the Scholiast, she was surnamed Oncaea, and in the other Ismenia. In the valley between the two hills, there are still the remains of an aqueduct, partly under and partly above ground, to which Dicaearchus refers (φέρεται δὲ καὶ ἀπὸ τῆς Καδμείας ὕδωρ ἀφανὲς διὰ σωλήνων ἀγόμενον, l. c.)

In the agora of the Cadmeia the house of Cadmus is said to have stood; and in this place were shown ruins of the bedchamber of Harmonia and Semele; statues of Dionysus, of Pronomus, the celebrated musician, and of Epaminondas; a temple of Ammon; the place where Teiresias observed the flight of birds; a temple of Fortune; three wooden statues of Aphrodite, with the surnames of Urania, Pandemus, and Apostrophia; and a temple of Demeter Thesmophorus. (Paus. 9.12. § § 3--5, 9.16. § § 1--5.)

Crossing the torrent Strophia, Pausanias saw near the gate Proetides the theatre with the temple of Dionysus (9.16.6). In this part of the city, to which Forchhammer gives the name of Ampheion, the following monuments are mentioned by Pausanias (Paus. 9.16.7, 9.17. § § 1--4): ruins of the house of Lycus and a monument of Semele monuments of the children of Amphion; a temple of Artemis Eucleia, and, near it, statues of Apollo Boedromius and of Hermes Agoraeus; the funeral pile (πυρά) of the children of Amphion, distant half a stadium from their tombs; two statues of Athena Zosteria; and the monument of Zethus and Amphion, being a mound of earth. As the lower city was deserted in the time of Pausanias, he does not mention the agora; but there is no doubt that it contained one, if not more, since Sophocles speaks of several agorae (Oed. Tyr. 20).

Outside the gate Proetides, on the road to Chalcis, Pausanias names the monuments of Melanippus, Tydeus, and the sons of Oedipus, and 15 stadia beyond the latter the monument of Teiresias. Pausanias also mentions a tomb of Hector and one of Asphodicus, at the fountain Oedipodeia, which is perhaps the modern fountain of St. Theodore. On the same road was the village Teumessus. (Paus. 9.18, 9.19.1.) After describing the road to Chalcis, Pausanias returns to the gate Proetides, outside which, towards the N., was the gymnasium of Iolaus, a stadium, the heroum of Iolaus, and, beyond the stadium, the hippodrome, containing the monument of Pindar (9.23. § § 1, 2). Pausanias then comes to the road leading from the Ogygian or Northern gate, to Acraephnium, after following which he returns to the city, and enumerates the objects outside the gate Neitae. Here, between the gate and the river Dirce, were the tomb of Menoeceus, the son of Creon, and a monument marking the spot where the two sons of Oedipus slew each other. The whole of this locality was called the Syrma (Σύρμα of Antigone, because, being unable to carry the dead body of her brother Polynices, she dragged it to the funenal pile of Eteocles. On the opposite side of the Dirce were the ruins of the house of Pindar, and a temple of Dindymene (9.25. § § 1--3). Pausanias then appears to have returned to the gate Neitae and followed the road which ran from this gate to On-chestus. He first mentions a temple of Themis, then temples of the Fates and of Zeus Agoraeus, and, a little farther, a statue of Hercules, surnamed Rhinocolustes, because he here cut off the noses of the heralds of Orchomenus. Twenty-five stadia beyond was the grove of Demeter Cabeiria and Persephone, and 7 stadia further a temple of the Cabeiri, to the COIN OF THEBES.

right of which was the Teneric plain, and to the left a road which at the end of 50 stadia conducted to Thespiae (9.25.5, 9.26. § § 1, 6).

(Leake, Northern Greece, vol. 2. p. 218, seq., vol. 4. p. 573, seq.; Ulrichs, Topographie von Theben, in Abhandl. der Bayer. Akad. p. 413, seq. 1841; Unger, Thebana Paradoxa, 1839; Forchhammer, Topographia Thebarum Heptapylarum, Kiliae, 1854.)

Thebae

(Θῆβαι), in the poets sometimes Thebé (Θήβη; Dor. Θήβα), later Diospŏlis Magna (Διόσπολις Μεγάλη, i. e. “Great City of Zeus”), in Egyptian Tuabu, in Scripture No or No The capital of Thebaïs, or Upper Egypt, and, for a long time, of the whole country. It was reputed the oldest city of the world. It stood in about the centre of the Thebaïd, on both banks of the Nile, above Coptos, and in the Nomos Coptites. It is said to have been founded under the first dynasty by Menes; but this is unsupported by any evidence. Others ascribed its foundation to Osiris, who named it after his mother, and others to Busiris. It appears to have been at the height of its splendour, as the capital of Egypt, and as a chief seat of worship of Ammon, about B.C. 1330 under the Nineteenth Dynasty. The fame of its grandeur had reached the Greeks as early as the time of Homer, who describes it, with poetical exaggeration, as having a hundred gates, from each of which it could send out 200 war chariots fully armed (Il. ix. 381). Homer's epithet of “Hundred-Gated” (ἑκατόμπυλοι) is repeatedly applied to the city by later writers. Its real extent was calculated by the Greek writers at 140 stadia (fourteen geographical miles) in circuit; and in Strabo's time, when the long transference of the seat of power to Lower Egypt had caused it to decline greatly, it still had a circuit of eighty stadia (Diod.i. 50; xv. 45; Strabo, pp. 805, 815). That these computations are not exaggerated is proved by the existing ruins, which extend from side to side of the valley of the Nile, here about six miles wide; while the rocks which bound the valley are perforated with tombs. These ruins, which are perhaps the most magnificent in the world, enclose within their site the four modern villages of Karnak, Luxor (El Uksur), Medînet Habou, and Kurna—the two former on the eastern and the two latter on the western side of the river. They consist of temples, colossi, sphinxes, and obelisks, and, on the western side, of tombs, many of which are cut in the rock and adorned with paintings, which are still as fresh as if just finished. These ruins are remarkable alike for their great antiquity and for the purity of their style. It is most probable that the great buildings were all erected before the Persian invasion, when Thebes was taken by Cambyses, who secured treasure to the amount of some $10,000,000, and burned the wooden habitations, after which time it never regained the rank of a capital city; and thus its architectural monuments escaped that Greek influence which is so marked in the edifices of Lower Egypt. Among its chief buildings, the ancient writers mention the Memnonium, with the two colossi in front of it, the temple of Ammon, in which one of the three chief colleges of priests was established, and the tombs of the kings. See Memnon.

To describe the ruins in detail, and to discuss their identification, would far exceed the possible limits of this article. Suffice it to mention among the monuments on the western (Libyan) side the three temples of Seti I., Rameses II., and Rameses III. Near the second is the fallen colossus of Rameses II., the largest statue in Egypt. (See Rameses.) Beyond is the terraced temple of Queen Hatasu of the Eighteenth Dynasty, near which a remarkable series of mummies and papyri were found by Brugsch in 1881. At Medînet Habou is a great temple of Rameses III., with interesting sculptures describing his victories over the Philistines, and also a calendar. Northwest of this are the cemeteries of the sacred apes and the Valley of the Tombs of the Queens (seventeen sepulchres). On the eastern bank at Luxor is the beautiful temple of Amenoph III., with an obelisk whose fellow now stands in the Place de la Concorde at Paris. At Karnak is a splendid group of temples built under the Twelfth Dynasty. The finest portion of this maze of architectural magnificence is the Great Hall, 170 by 329 feet, with twelve imposing columns 62 feet in height and 12 feet in diameter, and 122 minor columns, and two obelisks, of which one is the tallest in Egypt, being 108 feet in height. On the walls are fine sculptures depicting the battles of Seti I. and Rameses II. against the Hittites, Arabs, Syrians, and Armenians. In one of the porticos is recorded the expedition of Shishak I. against Jerusalem in B.C. 971.

In classical times Thebes was a great showplace, and was visited by both Greek and Roman tourists, among the latter being the emperor Hadrian.

Thebae

(1) Θῆβαι, in poetry Thebé (Θήβη, Dor. Θήβα). Now Thion; the chief city in Boeotia. It was situated in a plain southeast of Lake Helicé and northeast of Plataeae. Its acropolis, which was an oval eminence of no great height, was called Cadmea (Καδμεία), because it was said to have been founded by Cadmus, the leader of a Phoenician colony. On each side of this acropolis is a small valley, running up from the Theban plain into the low ridge of hills by which it is separated from that of Plataeae. Of these valleys, the one to the west is watered by the Dircé, and the one to the east by the Ismenus, both of which, however, are insignificant little streams, though so celebrated in ancient story. The greater part of the city stood in these valleys, and was built some time after the acropolis. It is said that the fortifications of the city were constructed by Amphion and his brother Zethus; and that, when Amphion played his lyre, the stones moved of their own accord and formed the wall. The territory of Thebes was called Thebaïs (Θηβαΐς), and extended eastward as far as the Euboean Sea. No city is more celebrated in the mythical ages of Greece than Thebes. It was here that the use of letters was first introduced from Phoenicia into western Europe. It was the reputed birthplace of the two great divinities, Dionysus and Heracles. It was also the native city of the great seer Tiresias, as well as of the great musician Amphion. It was the scene of the tragic fate of Oedipus, and of one of the most celebrated wars in the mythical annals of Greece. Polynices, who had been expelled from Thebes by his brother Eteocles, induced six other heroes to espouse his cause, and marched against the city; but they were all defeated and slain by the Thebans, with the exception of Adrastus, Polynices, and Eteocles falling by each other's hands. This is usually called the war of the Seven against Thebes. A few years afterwards the Epigoni, or descendants of the seven heroes, marched against Thebes to avenge their fathers' death; they took the city and razed it to the ground. Thebes is not mentioned by Homer in the catalogue of the Greek cities which fought against Troy, as it was probably supposed not yet to have recovered from its devastation by the Epigoni. (See Seven against Thebes.) It appears, however, at the earliest historical period as a large and flourishing city; and it is represented as possessing seven gates (ἑπτάπυλος), the number assigned to it in the ancient legends. Its government, after the abolition of monarchy, was an aristocracy, or rather an oligarchy, which continued to be the prevailing form of government for a long time, although occasionally exchanged for that of a democracy. Towards the end of the Peloponnesian War, however, the oligarchy finally disappears; and Thebes appears under a democratical form of government from this time, till it became with the rest of Greece subject to the Romans.

The Thebans were from an early period inveterate enemies of their neighbours, the Athenians. Their hatred of the latter people was probably one of the reasons which induced them to desert the cause of Grecian liberty in the great struggle against the Persian power. In the Peloponnesian War the Thebans naturally espoused the Spartan side, and contributed not a little to the downfall of Athens. But, in common with the other Greek States, they soon became disgnsted with the Spartan supremacy, and joined the confederacy formed against Sparta in B.C. 394. The peace of Antalcidas in 387 put an end to hostilities in Greece; but the treacherous seizure of the Cadmea by the Lacedaemonian general Phoebidas in 382, and its recovery by the Theban exiles in 379, led to a war between Thebes and Sparta, in which the former not only recovered its independence, but forever destroyed the Lacedaemonian supremacy. This was the most glorious period in the Theban annals; and the decisive defeat of the Spartans at the battle of Leuctra in 371 made Thebes the first power in Greece. Her greatness, however, was mainly due to the preëminent abilities of her citizens, Epaminondas and Pelopidas; and with the death of the former at the battle of Mantinea in 362, she lost the supremacy which she had so recently gained. Soon afterwards Philip of Macedon began to exercise a paramount influence over the greater part of Greece. The Thebans were induced, by the eloquence of Demosthenes, to forget their old animosities against the Athenians, and to join the latter in protecting the liberties of Greece; but their united forces were defeated by Philip, at the battle of Chaeronea, in 338. Soon after the death of Philip and the accession of Alexander, the Thebans made a last attempt to recover their liberty, but were cruelly punished by the young king. The city was taken by Alexander in 336, and was entirely destroyed, with the exception of the temples, and the house of the poet Pindar; 6000 inhabitants were slain, and 30,000 sold as slaves. In 316 the city was rebuilt by Cassander, with the assistance of the Athenians. In 290 it was taken by Demetrius Poliorcetes, and again suffered greatly. Dicaearchus, who flourished about this time, has left us an interesting account of the city. He describes it as about seventy stadia (nearly nine miles) in circumference, in form nearly circular, and in appearance somewhat gloomy. He says that it is plentifully provided with water, and contains better gardens than any other city in Greece; that it is most agreeable in summer, on account of its plentiful supply of cool and fresh water, and its large gardens; but that in winter it is very unpleasant, being destitute of fuel, exposed to floods and cold winds, and frequently visited by heavy falls of snow. He further represents the people as proud and insolent, and always ready to settle disputes by fighting, rather than by the ordinary course of justice. It is supposed that the population of the city at this time may have been between 50,000 and 60,000 souls. See Sankey, Spartan and Theban Supremacies (1877).

After the Macedonian period Thebes rapidly declined in importance; and it received its last blow from Sulla , who gave half of its territory to the Delphians. Strabo describes it as only a village in his time; and Pausanias, who visited it in the second century of the Christian era, says that the Cadmea alone was then inhabited. The modern town is also confined to this spot, and the surrounding country is covered with a confused heap of ruins. See E. Fabricius, Theben (Heidelberg, 1891); and the articles Epaminondas; Pelopidas.

(2) Called Phthiotĭcae (αἱ Φθιώτιδες), an important city of Thessaly in the district Phthiotis, at a short distance from the coast, and with a good harbour (Polyb. v. 99).

(3) A town in Lucania, rarely mentioned.