50 Fun Facts About Thebes, Greece

Which monster guarded the road to Thebes and devoured every traveller who failed to solve her riddle?

The Sphinx was a foreigner in Greek eyes: late lore had her sent from far-off Aethiopia, and she strangled anyone who failed her test.

Sigmund Freud named a famous psychological complex after which mythical king of Thebes?

Oedipus unknowingly killed his father and married his mother, and Freud used the legend to explain the origin of certain childhood neuroses.

Which conqueror razed Thebes to the ground in 335 BC after the city rose in revolt against him?

Alexander the Great destroyed the city and had its people sold into slavery, a fate that frightened Athens into submission.

The elite 300-man corps of ancient Thebes was said to be made up of 150 pairs of what?

Male lovers filled the ranks, and Plutarch linked the corps to vows that lover and beloved exchanged at the Theban shrine of the hero Iolaus.

Homer called the Greek Thebes "Seven-Gated" to tell it apart from a "Hundred-Gated" Thebes in which land?

Egypt had a Thebes of its own, which the Iliad calls Hundred-Gated, while the Greek city took its epithet from the gates in its legendary wall.

Greek legend credits the founder of Thebes with bringing which invention to Greece from Phoenicia?

The alphabet really did reach the Greeks from the Phoenicians, as Herodotus claimed, though centuries later than the myth's Bronze Age setting.

Which of the four Gospel writers is traditionally said to be buried in a church in Thebes, Greece?

Luke has a tomb in the city, and after tests on relics held in Padua, the bishop there sent back the rib that lay closest to the saint's heart.

Which Olympian god was the son of Zeus and Semele, a mortal princess of Thebes?

Dionysus was rescued unborn from his dying mother and sewn into the thigh of Zeus, who carried him until he was ready to be born.

The walls of Thebes were said to have risen when Amphion charmed the stones into place with which instrument?

A lyre played by Amphion made his stones glide gently into place, while his twin Zethus struggled to carry his own.

What is the answer to the riddle of Thebes about a creature that walks on four legs, then two, then three?

A human crawls on all fours as a baby, walks on two feet as an adult and leans on a walking stick in old age.

Which Phoenician prince from Tyre is credited in Greek legend with founding the city of Thebes?

Cadmus gave his name to the city's citadel, the Cadmea, whose remains can still be seen in the modern town.

The first nobles of Thebes were said to have sprung fully armed from which objects sown in the ground?

Dragon's teeth, sown on Athena's advice, grew into fierce warriors called the Spartoi, the Sown Men, from whom Theban nobles claimed descent.

Which mythical strongman, son of Zeus and the mortal Alcmene, was said to have been born in Thebes?

Heracles later married Megara, daughter of the Theban king Creon, and the city kept a statue of him nicknamed Nose-docker for mutilating enemy heralds.

Which daughter of the royal house of Thebes was sentenced to death for burying her brother against the king's decree?

Antigone, in Sophocles' play, argues that divine law outranks the king's; he relents after a seer's warning, only to find she has already hanged herself.

A contingent of 400 Thebans stood with Leonidas and his Spartans at which famous last stand?

Thermopylae saw the Thebans stay on with the Spartans for the final stand, yet soon afterwards their city's rulers went over to the invaders with great readiness.

Which elite Theban corps of 300 hand-picked soldiers was annihilated by the army of Macedon in 338 BC?

The Sacred Band, in Plutarch's account, was formed by the commander Gorgidas, who chose its members purely for ability and merit, regardless of social class.

Which poet's house was said to be the only home spared when Thebes was demolished in 335 BC?

Pindar had written verses praising an ancestor of the Macedonian king, who ordered that the house stay standing out of gratitude.

During the Byzantine era, Thebes grew rich as the empire's leading producer of which luxury fabric?

Silk from the city was prized above all others, and by the mid-12th century its workshops out-produced even those of Constantinople.

Which imperial power captured Thebes in 1458 and held it until the Greek War of Independence?

The Ottomans renamed the city İstefe and kept it for more than three centuries, apart from a Venetian interlude between 1687 and 1699.

Ancient Thebes was the leading city of which region of central Greece, separated from Attica by mountains?

Boeotia was once run by a league of its cities with Thebes at the head, a presidency it lost as punishment after the invasion of 480 BC.

Which Theban general, who broke the military power of Sparta, did Cicero later call the first man of Greece?

Epaminondas, dying of a spear wound, was said to have described his two great victories as his daughters.

At which battle of 371 BC did a Theban army shatter Sparta's long dominance on the battlefield?

Leuctra so upset the old order that the Theban herald who carried news of the win to Athens was met with stony silence.

After humbling Sparta, Thebes marched into Messenia and freed which enslaved people, the basis of the Spartan economy?

The helots of Messenia had been enslaved for some 230 years, and losing the region cost Sparta a third of its territory.

Which future king of Macedon spent part of his youth as a hostage in Thebes, studying its army?

Philip II received a military and diplomatic education in the city, and in 338 BC he defeated the very place that had schooled him.

A giant stone lion marks the common tomb of Thebans killed fighting Macedon at which battle?

Chaeronea's lion stands about 12.5 feet high, and 254 skeletons laid out in seven rows were found buried within its enclosure.

When most Greek cities united against invasion in 480 BC, the rulers of Thebes sided with which empire?

Persia won over the governing aristocracy of Thebes, and the victorious Greeks later punished the city for fighting zealously on the wrong side.

The founder of Thebes was told by which oracle to follow a cow and build where it lay down?

Delphi sent him after a cow with a half moon on her flank, and the animal led him on until she lay down exhausted.

The founder of Thebes first set out from Phoenicia to search for which sister, carried off by Zeus?

Europa was never found: an oracle ordered her brother to give up the quest and found a city instead.

The legendary founder of Thebes was a prince of Tyre, an ancient port in which modern country?

Lebanon is home to Tyre, the Phoenician port the prince sailed from under orders not to come home without his missing sister.

Which wedding gift to Harmonia, bride of the founder of Thebes, was said to bring misfortune to all its owners?

A necklace made by Hephaestus, in the most common telling, was the unlucky gift; it was later used to bribe Eriphyle into sending her husband to a doomed war.

Which Athenian tragedian, also known for the Oresteia, wrote Seven Against Thebes about a war for the city's throne?

Aeschylus gives the first certain list of seven attacking champions; before his play, Pausanias reports, the number was greater.

Which tragedy by Euripides ends with the women of Thebes tearing their own king apart in the mountains?

The Bacchae has a slighted god punish his own cousin, King Pentheus, whose mother ends the play carrying his head on a staff.

The blind Theban prophet Tiresias was famously said to have spent seven years transformed into what?

A woman is what Tiresias became after striking a pair of mating snakes with his stick, and a second meeting with snakes ended the spell.

Which mythical queen of Thebes boasted about her many children, only to see Apollo and Artemis kill them?

Niobe had mocked the goddess Leto for having only two children, and in Homer's telling she ends turned to stone, still brooding on her sorrows.

Which Theban hunter was turned into a stag and torn apart by his own hounds after angering Artemis?

Actaeon, in Ovid's telling, came upon the goddess bathing on a mountain near Thebes and was run down by his fifty hounds.

The twin builders of the walls of Thebes punished the cruel queen Dirce by tying her to which animal?

A bull drags her to her death in the Farnese Bull in Naples, the largest single sculpture yet recovered from antiquity.

The founder of Thebes had to serve which Olympian god for eight years as penance for killing the god's serpent?

Ares and Aphrodite are most often named as the parents of Harmonia, the bride the gods gave the founder once his penance was over.

Zeus turned to stone which uncatchable beast, sent by the gods to prey on the children of Thebes?

A fox fated never to be caught was chased by a hound fated to catch everything it chased, so Zeus ended the paradox by petrifying both.

Clay tablets found at Thebes are written in which Bronze Age script, an early way of writing Greek?

Linear B tablets found locally record the city's own name, in forms such as te-qa-de, meaning to Thebes.

Which name do modern Greeks use for Thebes, a market town about 50 km northwest of Athens?

Thiva is how modern Greeks say the ancient name, and the town sits on the motorway and railway linking Athens with Thessaloniki.

Which statesman led the surprise revolt of 379 BC that overthrew the pro-Spartan rulers of Thebes?

Pelopidas came from great wealth but spent it on his friends and on public service, content to lead the rough life of an athlete himself.

The Theban army that humbled Sparta in 371 BC stacked its best troops fifty deep on which part of its line?

The left wing was a break from tradition, set directly opposite the Spartan king and the best of his own troops.

At which battle of 362 BC did Thebes lose its greatest general, and with him its leadership of Greece?

Mantinea drew in almost all of Greece on one side or the other, and the general's death cost Thebes the leadership it needed to stay on top.

Which successor of the Macedonian conqueror rebuilt Thebes about twenty years after its destruction?

Cassander called on other Greek cities for skilled labour and manpower, and the Athenians rebuilt much of the wall.

After 1311, medieval Thebes served as a capital for which army of mercenaries turned rulers?

The Catalan Company had been hired by the Frankish Duke of Athens, who then refused to pay; in 1311 the mercenaries destroyed his army and took his lands.

Which mountain range south of Thebes forms the natural border between its region and Attica?

Cithaeron rises to 1,409 metres, and one tale has the mountain winning a singing contest against its neighbour Helikon.

The Thebaid, a Latin epic about the war for Thebes modelled on Virgil's Aeneid, was written by which Roman poet?

Statius said he spent twelve years composing the poem, which runs to 9,748 lines.

What name is given to the sons of the fallen champions who came back and finally defeated Thebes?

The Epigoni, whose name means offspring, attacked ten years after their fathers died, and in one telling the Thebans fled the city on a seer's advice.

Which people, then rulers of Sicily, plundered Thebes in 1147 and carried off its skilled craftsmen?

The Normans resettled the captured craftsmen in Palermo to build up an industry of their own, though Thebes quickly regained its prosperity.

Crates of Thebes gave away a large fortune to live on the streets of Athens, following which school of philosophy?

Cynicism cost him an inheritance but won him the respect of Athens, where he taught Zeno of Citium, the future founder of Stoicism.