We are delighted to welcome Paul Cartledge, of Clare College, University of Cambridge, to join members of the Kosmos Society for an Open House discussion on ‘Thebes: the lost city of ancient Greece’
Thebes, the third largest city in ancient Greece, is often considered a backwater, lacking culture and art. In fact, Thebes was the site of many important Greek myths, including Oedipus and The Seven Against Thebes, as well as an artistic tradition. Moreover, in the early fourth century BCE, Thebes ended the Spartan hegemony and freed the native Greek Messenian Helots, who had been held in serfdom to Sparta for hundreds of years.
The event was recorded on Friday, March 29 at 11 a.m. EDT, and you can view on the Kosmos Society YouTube channel or in the frame below:
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Paul Cartledge
Paul Cartledge was the A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at the University of Cambridge from 2008 to 2014, having previously been Professor of Greek History at Cambridge. He is currently A.G. Leventis Senior Research Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge. The most recent of his numerous publications include: Ancient Greece: A History in Eleven Cities (Oxford University Press, 2009, repr. in pb. as A Very Short History, 2011), Democracy: A Life (Oxford University Press, 2016, new edn with Afterword, 2018), and Thebes: The Forgotten City of Ancient Greece (Picador, 2020, pb. 2021).
Further reading
Cartledge, Paul. Thebes, The Forgotten City of Ancient Greece. Picador, 2020.