- First point: there was no such thing as a Theban Cycle. There were various epics involving the war on Thebes and the events that preceded it and followed it, but no cycle, not in the sense of a grouping of epics. The idea of a ‘Theban Cycle’ was invented in the 19th century.
- Some scholars have identified the ‘Cadmeia’, or citadel of Thebes, with the mythical city of Cadmus and Oedipus; but also that they are wrong to do so because it is extraordinarily misleading. The use of the name in archaeology comes from the fact that ‘Cadmeia’ is the name that classical-era Greeks called the citadel. This blending of myth and material evidence is very regrettable, because it tends to reinforce the misperception that myths are based on something real. In fact we have no good reason to see anything much historical in classical-era Greek sources for any period earlier than about 700 BCE. That does need some qualification: geographical settings in myths tend to be real, or nearly real; but the culture depicted in a mythical text is normally contemporary with the text, not with the supposed setting several centuries earlier, and the events cannot usually be treated as anything more than fiction. Where events do have a resemblance to something real, it’s simplest to take it that the resemblance is because the myth was designed to explain the situation at the time the myth was being told.
- [5:16 PM]To draw a parallel: drawing historical data from myths about Thebes is like drawing conclusions about the real mediaeval Nottingham from the 1991 Kevin Costner film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. The place is real; nothing else is. And there’s no reason to expect anything else. As an illustration, here’s how the archaeologist Hans Lohmann puts it in his unfortunate write-up on ‘Thebes’ for the New Pauly encyclopaedia:
- A period of prosperity followed, beginning around the middle of the 2nd millennium, with regional supremacy over the south and east of Boeotia … To this settlement is ascribed the foundation legend of Cadmus [1], for whom the citadel mount is named. Numerous cylinder seals (Seals), especially of Babylonian origin primarily from the 14th cent. BC, and extensive parts of a Linear B archive reveal the significance and the international relations of Mycenaean T. [1; 2], which was destroyed before the end of the Mycenaean era (13th/12th cents.; LH III B); perhaps this is why T. scarcely plays a role in Homer’s Iliad.
- The presumption that the Iliad is a direct reflection of Bronze Age Greece, and that the wealth of Bronze Age Thebes had anything to do with classical-era myths, couldn’t be more misleading if it tried. Classical-era Greeks weren’t aware of the Bronze Age Mycenaean palace culture in any way. (Even the phrase ‘Bronze Age’ is tendentious in this context, because it suggests parallels with the Hesiodic Myth of the Races.)