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Thebes

The Forgotten City of Ancient Greece

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Thebes

By: Paul Cartledge
Narrated by: David Timson
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About this listen

Continuously inhabited for five millennia and at one point the most powerful city in ancient Greece, Thebes has been overshadowed by its better-known rivals, Athens and Sparta.

According to myth, the city was founded when Kadmos sowed dragon’s teeth into the ground and warriors sprang forth, ready not only to build the fledgling city but to defend it from all comers.

It was Hercules’ birthplace and the home of the Sphinx, whose riddle Oedipus solved, winning the Theban crown and the king’s widow in marriage, little knowing that the widow was his mother, Jocasta.

The city’s history is every bit as rich as its mythic origins, from siding with the Persian invaders when their emperor, Xerxes, set out to conquer Aegean Greece, to siding with Sparta - like Thebes an oligarchy - to defeat Pericles' democratic Athens, to being utterly destroyed on the orders of Alexander the Great.

In Thebes: The Forgotten City of Ancient Greece, the acclaimed classical historian Paul Cartledge brings the city vividly to life and argues that it is central to our understanding of the ancient Greeks’ achievements - whether politically or culturally - and thus to our own culture and civilisation.

©2020 Paul Cartledge (P)2020 Macmillan Publishers International Ltd Civilisation Greece Ancient History Ancient Greece City Greek Mythology

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An unexpected delight

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is a solid history of ancient Thebes made compelling by a subtle, often wicked, sense of humour. This is emphasised to good effect by the narration, which helps produce a kind of relaxed discourse that reveals Cartledge’s thorough knowledge of his subject.

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