Thebes existed in several ways in antiquity. There was a city by that name on the Greek mainland, some hundred miles north-west of Athens. And there was a city by that name whose distinctive walled topography offered to Athenian playwrights a sealed conceptual space in which its ruling dynasty played itself out to destruction. These are not, of course, separate spaces, but nor are they entirely identical.

This paper examines how these two cities of Thebes – both walled, both ancient, both enduring – feed into and map onto one another. It examines the interplay of imagination and concrete space through time, and the ways in which the Thebes invoked in the Theatre of Dionysus could be experienced on the site of the city itself six hundred years later through the description offered by the Imperial travel writer Pausanias.

Dr Greta Hawes specializes in the study of Greek myth.  Her work examines ancient – and sometimes more recent – contexts for storytelling, the Greeks’ assessment of mythic phenomena in their own culture, and the modes of interpretation to which these gave rise.  Her first book, Rationalizing myth in antiquity (OUP, 2014), charts ancient dissatisfaction with the excesses of myth and the various attempts made by mythographers in particular to cut them down to size.  It argues that this ancient rationalizing tradition, so often dismissed for its banality, offers important insights into the practical difficulties inherent in distinguishing myth from history in antiquity, and indeed into the fragmented nature of myth itself as an emic concept.