Greek PantheonCity
Thebes
A powerful city-state and setting of many tragic myths including Oedipus, the Seven Against Thebes, and Dionysus's revenge.
About Thebes
Cadmus's city, tragedy's workshop
Thebes is where Cadmus sows the dragon's teeth, where Oedipus answers the Sphinx, where the Seven die at the gates, and where Dionysus wrecks Pentheus in Euripides' Bacchae. Homer already knows it as seven-gated. Aeschylus and Sophocles make it a machine for inherited pollution. Cult of Dionysus and Apollo Ismenios is local and real; the Labdacid house is theater. The archaeological Kadmeia is a Bronze Age citadel wearing a later tragic costume.
On the map
Thebes among other places of the Greek Pantheon.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Euripides, Bacchae
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Coordinates mark where the myths place a site, or where the tradition locates it today. Mythic realms are left off the map or marked as symbolic placements.
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