Ron Peters's Reviews > Thebes: The Forgotten City of Ancient Greece

This is a well-written book on ancient Greece (i.e., this is not a book about the Thebes in ancient Egypt). The fact that it was well-reviewed by Bettany Hughes, for whom I’ve had a mad crush for more than two decades, of course had nothing to do with my liking it! 😀

Among his many other writings, Cartledge penned a 2004 book on The Spartans, which I prefer, but, like that book, this one on Thebes is nicely illustrated.

A great deal of the history of ancient Greece centres on the alliances, intrigues, and mutual treachery among Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and their sometime allies. Probably because Thebes produced no great historians, Thebes is treated in most histories like an object. So Cartledge’s subtitle, “The Forgotten City,” is apt, and it was good to read about the city as an independent historical actor. There is still, of course, much inevitable overlap with general histories of ancient Greece.

Thebes was at the centre of a great deal of Greek mythology, including the stories of Herakles, Oedipus, Dionysus, and Cadmus. It was home to the poet Pindar. At various times it was the political leader of the Boeotian Federation, more of an oligarchy rather than a democracy, a much-feared military rival with its famed Sacred Band of Thebes, and widely reviled for siding with Xerxes I in his 480 BCE invasion of Greece. It was eventually razed by Alexander the Great in 335 BCE, though it continues as a city of 30,000 people to this day. Cartledge does a nice job of reviewing the modern academic literature on Thebes and gives a good overview of modern art productions related to the history of Thebes and its mythology.