Short answers, pulled from the story.
Alexander the Great destroyed Thebes in 335 BC as punishment for an unsuccessful revolt against his rule, launched while he was campaigning in the north. His forces and Greek allies razed the city almost completely, sparing only the temples, the house of the poet Pindar, and the lives of priests, pro-Macedonian leaders, and Pindar's descendants. The surviving population was sold into slavery.
The Sacred Band of Thebes was an elite military unit composed entirely of male lovers. It was celebrated as instrumental in Thebes's decisive victory over Sparta at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC. Pelopidas, born around 420 BC, commanded the Sacred Band at Leuctra.
Cassander, one of the diadochi who ruled in Greece after Alexander's death in 323 BC, re-established Thebes in 315 BC. He called on Greek city-states to contribute skilled labor and materials; the Athenians rebuilt much of the city wall, and contributions came from Megalopolis, Messene, Sicily, and Italy.
By the middle of the 12th century, Thebes had become the biggest producer of silks in the entire Byzantine Empire, surpassing even Constantinople. The city's silk workshops were boosted from the 11th century onward by imports of soaps and dyes from Athens, and its weavers were famed across the empire for quality and skill.
Thebes was the setting for some of the most influential myth cycles in Greek literature, including the stories of Cadmus, Oedipus, Dionysus, and Heracles. Scholars have identified five main cycles of Theban legend, which the source says rival the myths of Troy in their wide influence on classical Greek literature. Cadmus, a Phoenician prince from Tyre, was credited with founding the citadel and introducing the Phoenician alphabet to Greece.
The Battle of Leuctra, fought in 371 BC, was a decisive Theban victory over Sparta that ended Spartan military dominance in Greece. The victory was celebrated across Greece as a triumph for the oppressed. Afterward, Theban forces under Epaminondas carried the war into the Peloponnese and permanently crippled Spartan power, in part by freeing many helot slaves who formed the basis of the Spartan economy.