Boeotia

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Boeotia, a regional unit of Greece with Livadeia as its capital and Thebes as its largest city, was once the target of Athenian mockery. Athenians called its people Hog-Boeotians, and they claimed Boeotian ears were incapable of appreciating music or poetry.

  The insult is strange, because this same people produced Pindar, Hesiod, Epaminondas, Pelopidas and Plutarch. The French language still keeps the jibe alive: the word béotien means a Philistine, someone deaf to culture.

  So who were the Boeotians, and where did they come from? Why did a land that supplied Greek tragedy with so many of its plots never fuse into one state? And why did a region of such political weight sink into centuries of decay?

  The answers begin with the ground itself.

  111

• 2. Mountains and Lakes

  ›

  Four mountain ranges frame Boeotia: Mount Parnassus in the west, Mount Helicon in the southwest, Cithaeron in the south and Parnitha in the east. The region sits north of the eastern part of the Gulf of Corinth. It also holds a short coastline on the Gulf of Euboea.

  In ancient times its neighbours were Megaris, now West Attica, to the south and Attica to the southeast. Euboea lay to the northeast, Opuntian Locris, now part of Phthiotis, to the north, and Phocis to the west.

  The Cephissus, the longest river in Boeotia, runs through the centre, where most of the low-lying land is found. Lake Copais once filled a large part of that central country. Lake Yliki, another large lake, lies near Thebes.

  This layout gave the region real political weight. Its place on the north shore of the Gulf of Corinth, its strong frontiers and the ease of travel across its wide territory all helped. The lack of good harbours held back its growth at sea.

  The plains beside Lake Copais were where the first known people of Boeotia left their traces, around the city of Orchomenus.

  111

• 3. The Minyans of Orchomenus

  ›

  Pausanias credits the Minyans, the earliest known inhabitants of Boeotia, with founding the maritime Ionian city of Teos. He also says they occupied the islands of Lemnos and Thera. Some writers even gave the name Minyans to the Argonauts.

  Legend adds that the citizens of Thebes paid an annual tribute to a king named Erginus. Whatever the truth of the tale, the Minyans left real monuments. Between 1880 and 1886, Heinrich Schliemann dug at Orchomenus and uncovered a tholos tomb that he called the Tomb of Minyas.

  This Mycenaean monument rivalled the beehive tomb known as the Treasury of Atreus at Mycenae. Orchomenus and Thebes both preserved visible Mycenaean remains, and those ruins testify to the early wealth and power of the region.

  Scholars still argue about who the Minyans were. They may have been proto-Greek speakers. Most agree that the Mycenaeans descended from the Minyans of the Middle Helladic period, yet they think Minyan culture was founded by an indigenous people.

  Orchomenus kept drawing excavators. In 1893, A. de Ridder dug the temple of Asclepios and some burials in the Roman necropolis. A Bavarian mission under Heinrich Bulle and Adolf Furtwängler worked the site in 1903-05.

  In 1970-73, the Archaeological Service under Theodore Spyropoulos uncovered a Mycenaean palace, a prehistoric cemetery and the ancient amphitheatre. The Greeks themselves told several competing stories about where the Boeotians had come from.

  3411

• 4. Exiles from Thessaly

  ›

  According to tradition, two generations after the Fall of Troy in 1200 BC, the Boeotians were driven out of Thessaly by invaders from its north-west. Thessaly was the largest fertile plain in Greece. The exiles moved south and settled in another rich plain.

  Others crossed the Aegean and settled on Lesbos and in Aeolis in Asia Minor. Some stayed in Thessaly, retreating into the hill country and becoming the perioikoi, the "dwellers around". The name Boeotians itself may come from Mount Boeon in Epirus.

  Several clues support the Thessalian story. The Aeolic dialect, certain place names and old cults all tie the two regions together. Itonian Athena, Homoloian Zeus, Alalcomenae, Corseia and Pharae all have Thessalian roots, and most scholars accept the core of the tradition.

  Three versions of the expulsion survive. In the first, a Thessalian leader named Thessalus, son of Aiatus, drove the Boiotoi out. Hellanicus is probably the source, and Thucydides' "sixtieth year" reflects two generations of thirty years.

  A second version places the expulsion in the reign of Aiatus, one generation after the war. Plutarch's story belongs here. It says that Opheltas, king of the Boiotoi, took Chaeronea by force from "the barbarians".

  A third version blends the two. Hieronymus counts four generations in all, as the Cadmeans returned to Thebes after the war.

  All the traditions send the invaders along one route: from Thessaly through Thermopylae and Hyampolis to Chaeronea. From there they could strike Orchomenus and Coronea. Near Coronea stood the sanctuary of Itonian Athena, where the Pamboeotia festival was held, and the sanctity of nearby Alalcomenae points the same way. Western Boeotia was likely the first area settled.

  The advance then went eastward on both sides of Lake Copais. The northern arm reached Anthedon, a town once said to have been held by Thracians. The southern arm reached Thebes and Thespiae.

  In Thebes, Damasichthon, son of Opheltas, took power from Autesion, son of Tisamenus. The tradition suggests a peaceful takeover, with Autesion joining the Dorians. Two generations later, Xanthus, son of Ptolemy, led the push into the Asopus valley.

  Thucydides records that the Thebans remembered Plataea and the Asopus valley being reduced later than the rest, under an agreed plan. The advance stalled on what became the Athenian frontier. The legend of Xanthus and Melanthus may preserve that moment.

  The death of Xanthus symbolised the end of the conquest and the sudden end of kingship. Oldest of all the ties holding the newcomers together was religious: Boeotia belonged to the Anthelian Amphictyonic League, a confederacy of related tribes, despite lying far from Anthela.

  The original peoples, apart from the Minyae, were absorbed, and the Boeotians emerged as one nation. What followed was a country of rival cities, led by Thebes, Orchomenus, Plataea and Thespiae.

  11121319

• 5. Legends and Poets

  ›

  Cadmus, said to have founded Thebes and to have brought the alphabet to Greece, is only one figure in a crowded cast of Boeotian legends. The older myths took their final shape in the Mycenaean age, 1600-1200 BC. Mycenaean Greeks then settled in Boeotia, and Thebes became an important centre.

  Many of these stories link to the myths of Argos. Others hint at ties with Phoenicia, where the Mycenaean Greeks, and later the Euboean Greeks, set up trading posts.

  Eros was worshipped by a fertility cult at Thespiae. The Muses lived on Mount Helicon. Ogyges gave his name to the Ogygian deluge. Dionysus and Semele, Narcissus, Niobe, and Antiope with her sons Amphion and Zethus all belong to Boeotia. Heracles was born in Thebes.

  Orion was born in Boeotia, and he was said to have fathered 50 sons with the daughters of a local river god. The Theban Cycle holds the myths of Oedipus and the Sphinx, and of the Seven against Thebes.

  The three great tragedians mined this material. Aeschylus wrote Seven Against Thebes. Sophocles wrote Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone, together known as the Theban plays. Euripides wrote Bacchae, Phoenician Women, Suppliants and Heracles.

  Some Boeotian plays are lost, among them Aeschylus's Niobe and Euripides's Antiope. At Lebadea stood the ancient oracular shrine of Trophonius. Graea, an ancient Boeotian city, is sometimes thought to be the origin of the Latin word Graecus, from which English takes Greece and Greeks.

  Hesiod, who lived in Boeotia, left a different kind of record. Historians and economists mine his poem Works and Days for evidence of the Boeotian economy in the Homeric Age. It shows a farmer using artisans to "do the technical work in making his plow and wagon".

  The poem also records the first stirrings of sea commerce and its rising importance in Greek economic life.

  36810

• 6. A Loose Federation

  ›

  Until the late 6th century BC, Boeotia hardly figures in history, and its people are known mainly as makers of geometric pottery. That ware resembles the Dipylon ware of Athens.

  Thebes, with its central position and military strength, was the natural capital. Orchomenus, Plataea and Thespiae were the other major towns. The Thebans constantly hoped to fold the other towns into one state, just as Athens had absorbed the communities of Attica.

  The outlying cities refused. They allowed only a loose federation, which at first was purely religious. Around 519 BC, Plataea resisted Theban pressure, and Athens stepped in on its behalf. Athens defeated the Boeotian levy then and again in 507 BC.

  Unlike the Arcadians, the Boeotians generally acted together against foreign enemies. Yet the struggle among their cities was a serious brake on the nation's growth.

  The Hellenica Oxyrhynchia describes the Boeotian League of 395 BC. It had eleven groups of sovereign cities and associated townships. Each group elected one Boeotarch, a minister of war and foreign affairs, and sent sixty delegates to the federal council at Thebes. Each also supplied about 1000 infantry and 100 cavalry.

  Thebes provided four Boeotarchs by then, two of them for conquered places such as Plataea, Scolus, Erythrae and Scaphae. Orchomenus, Hysiae and Tanagra supplied one each. Thespiae, Thisbe and Eutresis shared two. Haliartus, Lebadea and Coronea took turns supplying one, as did Acraephia, Copae and Chaeronea.

  A safeguard limited the central government. Every important policy question had to be ratified by the council of each city. Only the propertied classes could sit on those councils, which were divided into four sections that voted on new measures in turn.

  The League's army of 11,000 infantry and 1,100 cavalry has become the basis for estimating the region's population. John Bintliff adds 21,000 light troops and rowers, reaching 33,100 men. With women, two children and one slave per household, he estimates 165,500 people, including 33,100 slaves.

  Mogens Herman Hansen adds 12,100 light troops, for 24,200 men in the army. He takes 25% of men as ineligible for service and calculates a minimum free population of 144,050. He proposes a maximum of 250,000, and he leaves slaves and foreign residents unquantified.

  Tahrir records put the late sixteenth-century population at 38,000-50,000. The 1889 census counted 40,000-42,000, and the 2011 census counted 117,920, still below Hansen's minimum for the ancient free population.

  713151619

• 7. Wars and Rival Powers

  ›

  In 480 BC, during the Persian invasion, Thebes helped the invaders. As a result, the presidency of the Boeotian League was taken from it for a time. In 457 BC, after the Battle of Tanagra, the Spartans restored Thebes as a bulwark against Athens.

  Athens struck back and won at the Battle of Oenophyta. It took control of the whole country and pulled down the wall the Spartans had built. It also occupied Phocis, the original source of the conflict, and Opuntian Locris.

  For ten years Athens ruled Boeotia through newly installed democracies. In 447 BC the people revolted, and a victory at the Battle of Coronea won back their independence.

  During the Peloponnesian War the Boeotians fought zealously against Athens. They drifted slightly from Sparta after the peace of Nicias, but they never softened their hostility to their neighbours. They served well at Syracuse and at the Battle of Arginusae.

  Their greatest achievement was the decisive victory over the Athenian army at the Battle of Delium in 424 BC. Both their heavy infantry and their cavalry showed unusual efficiency there.

  In the Corinthian War, Boeotia fought Sparta at Haliartus and Coronea in 395-394 BC. Resentment of foreign interference drove this change of policy. Yet dislike of Thebes was growing, and Sparta encouraged it by insisting on the independence of every city in the Peace of Antaclidas of 387 BC.

  In 374 BC, Pelopidas restored Theban dominance. Boeotian contingents then fought in all the campaigns of Epaminondas against the Spartans, most notably at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC. They also fought in the Third Sacred War against Phocis in 356-346 BC. In dealings with Philip of Macedon, the cities simply followed Thebes.

  The federal constitution had changed to match the democratic governments across the land. Sovereign power sat with the popular assembly, which elected between seven and twelve Boeotarchs and approved all laws.

  At the Battle of Chaeroneia, the Boeotian heavy infantry again distinguished itself. After that battle, the land never rose to prosperity again.

  121914

• 8. Decay and Recovery

  ›

  In 335 BC, Alexander the Great destroyed Thebes, and with it the political energy of the Boeotians. They never again pursued an independent policy. They followed protecting powers instead, and although they kept up military training, they could not defend their frontiers. The land became, more than ever, the "dancing-ground of Ares".

  About 245 BC, Boeotia was briefly enrolled in the Aetolian League. For the most part it stayed loyal to Macedon and backed its later kings against Rome. Rome dissolved the Boeotian League in 171 BC. It was revived under Augustus and merged with the other central Greek federations in the Achaean synod.

  The First Mithridatic War brought devastation that dealt the death-blow to the country's prosperity. Only one bright interval followed. Under the Frankish rulers of Athens, from 1205 to 1310, the underground drainage channels of Lake Kopais, called katavothra, were repaired and agriculture was encouraged.

  Otherwise Boeotia stayed in decay for a long time, made worse by occasional barbarian raids. Recovery began only in 1895, when the Kopais drainage channels were put back in working order.

  Administratively, Boeotia was created as a prefecture in 1836, again in 1899 and again in 1943. Each time it was carved out of the earlier Attica and Boeotia prefecture. The 2011 Kallikratis reform created the present regional unit from that prefecture and divided it into six municipalities: Aliartos-Thespies, Distomo-Arachova-Antikyra, Livadeia, Orchomenos, Tanagra and Thebes.

  Today Boeotia is home to the third largest pasta factory in Europe, built by MISKO, a member of the Barilla Group. Nestlé and Viohalco also run factories at Oinofyta, in a region once known for its battlefields.

  1171819