Boeotia is a region in Central Greece west of Phocis and east of Attica, with sea coasts on both the Corinthian Gulf and the Euripus Strait. Its hinterland was divided into two plains by Lake Copias (drained 1867-87), with the northwest being dominated by Orchomenus and the southeast by Thebes. The southeast frontier is formed by Mount Cithaeron and Mount Parnes. The town of Plataea lay just north of Cithaeron. Further northwest is Boeotia’s tallest mountain, Helicon, with an elevation of 1749 metres (5738 ft).
In myth, Cadmus (son of Agenor, king of Tyre) was told by the Delphic Oracle to follow a cow into Boeotia and build a city where she rested. When she stopped on a low plateau overlooking Lake Copias, Cadmus killed the resident dragon and sowed its teeth. They promptly became armed men (Spartoi, ‘sown men’) who killed each other except for five who fathered the Theban race on the acropolis hill named Cadmeia after Cadmus. Thebes also claimed Heracles as its own in competition with Argos and Tiryns. In addition, the place enshrined the sagas of Oedipus and the Seven against Thebes recounted in the Thebaid and the Epigoni.
The Cadmeia, inhabited in the Neolithic, became a large Mycenaean city with a palace that burned down c.1350 BC. A new palace suffered the same fate in c.1250 BC. It was during this disturbed period that the Boiotoi are said to have arrived in the territory, coming from Arne in Thessaly. Thebes quickly outstripped the other Boeotian towns, but was never strong enough to combine them into a unitary state.
The Theban oligarchy was friendly with the Pisistratids of Athens until in c.519 BC the city of Plataea near Boeotia’s border with Attica when threatened by its powerful neighbour Thebes, asked and received Athenian protection. Similarities in coinage suggest that some progress towards Boeotian unity was made in the sixth century BC, but it was not until 446 BC that the Boeotian League was formed.
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