Mr. Cartledge’s command of the historical material is effortless and exhaustive, and his appreciation of Thebes is persuasive. Between the radical but self-destructive democracy of Athens and Sparta’s totalitarian oligarchy (both imperialist), Thebes and Boeotia stand in the middle as an early model of democratic federalism.

Cartledge, matching his unrivaled command of the complex, fragmentary and often contradictory sources to his talents as a storyteller, traces the arc of the Theban story as well as anyone is likely to trace it.

Thebes, a survey of a thousand years of Theban myth and history, marks a new phase in Paul Cartledge’s career..

After a slightly pedestrian introduction—it read better a second time as a summing-up after finishing the book—and the lack of a Theban Thucydides to put meat on the bones of their decades on the naughty step, Cartledge’s narrative comes to life as the city of Thebes flourishes. The story of their rise and fall in the second half of the book is told as vividly as he relates their myths in the enjoyable second chapter. Alas, for Thebes, glory was all too fleeting..

This is unashamedly a work of advocacy. Cartledge wants to convince us that Thebes should in fact be 'central to our understanding of the ancient Greeks’ multiple achievements—whether viewed politically or culturally—and thus to the wider politico-cultural traditions of western Europe, the Americas, and indeed the world.' That is over-egging it a bit: Thebes is never going to warrant more than a footnote in the history of Western civilization. But Cartledge does make an impressive case that the Thebans were not (just) the violent lunkheads of ancient Greek stereotype. As he rightly underlines, most of our evidence for Classical Thebes comes from Athenian writers (Thucydides, Xenophon, Demosthenes), and the Athenians had a particular loathing for their northern neighbours: imagine a history of Ireland based only on things the English have said about the Irish. The strongest plank in Cartledge’s argument is constitutional.

Eminent classicist Cartledge examines the history, mythical and proven, of an ancient Greek city that is often overlooked in standard texts.

Diving deep into centuries’ worth of scholarship, Cartledge manages to make the ancient world accessible to modern readers. This deeply informed and richly detailed chronicle restores Thebes to its rightful place in history..