A city in Boiotia.
During the Trojan War, Peneleos and Leitos commanded the Achaian soldiers from Thebes and 28 other cities in Boiotia. Arkesilaos, Prothoenor, and Klonios served as co-commanders.
The god Apollon guided a man named Kadmos to the site on which Thebes was built, he called his city Kadmea.1 As the city's precincts expanded, the newer city was called Thebes, after a nymph* named Thebe,2 the consort of one of the men who built the foundations and battlements of the new city. Residents of the incorporated cities were called Kadmeians and Thebans.
In preparation for an attack on Thebes, Tydeus, father of the Achaian commander Diomedes, ventured into the city and challenged the finest young Kadmeians to athletic competitions. He defeated them all in every event. To assuage their humiliation, fifty Kadmeians ambushed Tydeus as he was leaving the city. Tydeus killed all but one. He let one man live to report the slaughter to the other Kadmeians.
The soldiers from Thebes who fought in the Trojan War were referred to as Thebans, not Kadmeians.
There was an oracle of Ismenian Apollon at Thebes that was briefly mentioned in the ancient texts. The historian Herodotos write: "there one may consult just as at Olympia with victims (animal sacrifices)."
* Nymphs—goddesses with symbiotic relationships with aspects of the natural world.
| 1. Pausanias, Description of Greece book 9.5.2 2. Apollodorus, The Library book 3.5.6 |