DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1035#0078
42 TOPOGRAPHY OF THEBES. [Chap. I.
ruins still traced on the west bank, is far more au-
thentic, affirms that Thebes " had a great many-
temples, the greater part of which Cambyses de-
faced." Nor do these authors agree as to the
extent of this city, which, according to the geogra-
pher, was eighty stadia* in length, while Diodorus
allows the circuit to have been only a hundred and
forty f—a disparity which may be partially recon-
ciled by admitting that it was greatly enlarged after
the time of Menes, to whose reign the historian
here alludes.^ The epithet Hecatompylos, applied
to it by Homer, has generally been supposed to re-
fer to the hundred gates of its wall of circuit, but
this difficulty is happily solved by an observation
of Diodorus, that many suppose them " to have
been the Propylsea of the temples," § and that this
metaphorical expression rather implies a plurality
than a definite number. Were it not so, the reader
might be surprised to learn that this hundred-gated
city was never enclosed by a wall—a fact fully
proved by the non-existence of the least vestige of
it; for, even allowing it to have been of crude brick,
it would, from its great thickness, have survived
the ravages of time equally with those of similar
materials of the early epoch of the third Thothmes.
Or supposing it to have been destroyed by the
* About nine miles and one-sixth English.
f About sixteen miles, if Roman stades. Judging from the
present remains, the greatest length of Thebes was five miles and
a quarter, and the breadth three. Vide my Survey.
| lib. i. s. 45.
§ These were the real bulwarks and fortresses of Thebes.
ruins still traced on the west bank, is far more au-
thentic, affirms that Thebes " had a great many-
temples, the greater part of which Cambyses de-
faced." Nor do these authors agree as to the
extent of this city, which, according to the geogra-
pher, was eighty stadia* in length, while Diodorus
allows the circuit to have been only a hundred and
forty f—a disparity which may be partially recon-
ciled by admitting that it was greatly enlarged after
the time of Menes, to whose reign the historian
here alludes.^ The epithet Hecatompylos, applied
to it by Homer, has generally been supposed to re-
fer to the hundred gates of its wall of circuit, but
this difficulty is happily solved by an observation
of Diodorus, that many suppose them " to have
been the Propylsea of the temples," § and that this
metaphorical expression rather implies a plurality
than a definite number. Were it not so, the reader
might be surprised to learn that this hundred-gated
city was never enclosed by a wall—a fact fully
proved by the non-existence of the least vestige of
it; for, even allowing it to have been of crude brick,
it would, from its great thickness, have survived
the ravages of time equally with those of similar
materials of the early epoch of the third Thothmes.
Or supposing it to have been destroyed by the
* About nine miles and one-sixth English.
f About sixteen miles, if Roman stades. Judging from the
present remains, the greatest length of Thebes was five miles and
a quarter, and the breadth three. Vide my Survey.
| lib. i. s. 45.
§ These were the real bulwarks and fortresses of Thebes.