Bibliotheca Historica

​Cassander, having assembled a sufficient force, set out from Macedonia, eager to expel Alexander, the son of Polyperchon, from the Peloponnese; for this man was the last of his opponents who remained with an army, and he had seized opportunistic cities and places. Now he passed through Thessaly in safety, but finding the passes at Thermopylae guarded by the Aetolians, he forced his way through them with difficulty and advanced into Boeotia.

​And having summoned from all quarters those of the Thebans who had survived, he set about resettling Thebes, conceiving that he had a most excellent opportunity to restore a city renowned both for its achievements and for the myths handed down concerning it, and that through this benefaction he would obtain immortal glory.

​For it has happened that this city has experienced the greatest and most numerous changes, having been laid waste not a few times; concerning which it is not out of place to speak in summary.

​For after the flood of Deucalion, when Cadmus had founded the city called Cadmeia after him, there gathered to it a people whom some called Sparti because they had been collected from all quarters, and others Thebagenes because, being originally from the aforementioned city, they had been driven out and scattered by the flood.

​Now those who inhabited it at that time were later defeated and expelled by the Encheleians in war, at which very time it happened that Cadmus and his followers also fled to the Illyrians. After this, when Amphion and Zethus had gained possession of the place and then for the first time built the city, even as the poet says: “Who first established the seat of seven-gated Thebes,” for the second time those who inhabited the place were expelled, when Polydorus, the son of Cadmus, returned and gained control of affairs because of the disaster that had befallen Amphion regarding his children.

​Subsequently, while his descendants were reigning and the whole country was already called Boeotia after Boeotus, the son of Melanippe and Poseidon, who had ruled over those regions, for the third time the Thebans were expelled when the Epigoni from Argos took the city by siege.

​Of those who were expelled, the survivors fled to Alalcomenia and Mount Tilphossium, but when the Argives withdrew, they returned to their native land. After this, however, during the Trojan War, when the Thebans made an expedition into Asia, those who were left behind were expelled, along with the other Boeotians, by the Pelasgians.

​After this, having met with no small misfortunes, they returned to Boeotia with difficulty after the fourth generation, according to the oracle concerning the crows, and inhabited Thebes. From those times the city continued for about eight hundred years, and at first the Thebans were leaders of their own nation, and afterwards disputed for the hegemony of the Greeks, until Alexander, the son of Philip, took it by storm and razed it to the ground.