Victor Davis Hanson
As the power of the fifth-century Athenian and fourth-century Spartan empires declined, and after the stunning defeat of Sparta at the battle of Leuctra (371 BC), the most ancient of the Greek city-states Thebes proved re-ascendant. And for more than a decade under the twin leadership of Epaminondas and Pelopidas, it dominated the politics and wars of the classical Greeks.
Thebes had defeated Sparta, invaded its supposedly inviolate homeland, freed the Messenian helots, democratized much of the Peloponnese, and anchored the Panhellenic resistance to Macedonian aggression.
But by the time of the Macedonian victory over Greece at Chaeronea (338 BC), both Theban generals had been dead for over two decades and the city’s prestige rested largely on the fumes of its past glory. So, the city too came under the domination of the Macedonians, as did all other Greek city-states.
Yet in 336 BC, the 46-year-old conqueror of Greece, the Macedonian Philip II was assassinated. Ebullition broke out on the rumors of his demise. The 1,500 Greek city-states immediately sensed liberation was at hand. Rumors that Alexander, Philip II’s, son, was also murdered next reached Greece. Dynastic chaos supposedly was now engulfing Macedon and sparked renewed resistance.
The Thebans, with visions of past grandeur, attacked and imprisoned the occupying Macedonian garrison. They rashly declared their independence. And they announced that all Greece would be free and would follow their prompt. Supposedly allied armies from the Peloponnese led by Sparta were soon on the move to join the upstart Thebes. The Athenian orator Demosthenes swooned with the news and promised Athenian help.
But soon darker rumors reached Greece. The 21-year Alexander who had fought alongside his father at Chaeronea just three years earlier, was not only not dead, but he had already squashed his numerous rival relatives, old-guard generals, and would-be claimants. Indeed, Alexander was not only now the new successor king of Thebes, but also reportedly on his way southward to put down the Greek rebellion, some 250 miles distant.
And then in less than two weeks Alexander to the amazement of all actually showed up outside the walls of Thebes with 30,000 battle-hardened Macedonians to cut off the head of the rebellion. He delivered ultimata to release the hostage Macedonians inside the walls, to surrender the city, to turn over the firebrand insurrectionists, and thereby to save Thebes and see it return as a calm and safe subject city of the soon-to-be global Macedonian empire. He waited only three days as he prepared his assault.
The Thebans rejected all those terms. They even insulted Alexander and dared him to take the city. The Macedonians furiously had built siege engines (rams and catapults), massed their phalanx outside the walls, and were now determined to storm the walls and erase Thebes from existence—and so remind the other Greeks of the eliminationist wages of resistance.
Then suddenly, as Thebes was surrounded, help from Athens evaporated. The Peloponnesian armies that had reached the Isthmus of Corinth and were not far away suddenly turned around and went home. Thebes was alone. It nevertheless rejected terms and sent its own hallowed phalanx out to fight the Macedonians beyond the walls.
What followed was predictable. The deadly Macedonian phalanx pushed the Thebans back into the city, collapsing resistance. Then the entire besieging army broke through and ransacked the city, murdering 6,000 soldiers and civilians, and capturing at least 30,000 surviving women, children, and elderly—all at a loss of 500 Macedonians. Alexander enslaved and sold off almost all the survivors. He unleashed the men of rival and hostile nearby city-states who had historically hated the Thebans to ravage the city, murder any hide-out survivors, and loot the countryside.
Alexander then leveled all the buildings of hallowed Thebes except for the house of the iconic poet Pindar and some religious shrines. He recovered a small fortune from the sale of the now-enslaved surviving Thebans. As a result, there were now no Thebes, no Thebans, and little reminders of the 1,100-year-old city.
As a postscript, the Macedonian regent Cassander twenty years later, eight years after the death of Alexander himself, founded a new Macedonian Thebes on the rubble, as a simulacrum of the vanquished ancient city and its people who had long disappeared into history. It was said later that Alexander regretted his extermination, and that the Macedonian successors had founded their own city of Thebes in homage to the end of mythical Thebes, as a way to ingratiate themselves with the Greek city-states. Rumors spread that a few old Thebans had escaped the original siege, found sanctuaries as exiles from the city, and now drifted back to the Macedonian surrogate city.
What explains the last hours of the doomed ancient city? Naïve reliance on fickle allies? Nearly inexplicable ignorance about the true aims and capability of the new young king Alexander? A belief that Thebes was the Thebes of old and that the city-state system of Greece was still vibrant and dynamic?
All that and more ensured the annihilation. And so disappeared from history the celebrated home to Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes, Sophocles’ Oedipus trilogy (Oedipus the King, Antigone, and Oedipus at Colonus) and Euripides’ Bacchae. So, the city and culture that had produced Pindar, Pelopidas, and Epaminondas came to an end, whose memory now lingered only on the Athenian stage.
Next: The Deletion of Carthage
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