Places Discussed (Cyclopedia of Literary Places)   *Thebes
(theebz). Ancient Greek city located in Boeotia, a district
northwest of Athens, Thebes was famous in the ancient world for
its tragic royal family and the seven-gated wall surrounding the
city. The long-standing enemy of Athens, Thebes was the setting
of several Greek tragedies. Despotic Thebes seems to have served
Athenian playwrights of the fifth century b.c.e. as a kind of
inverted mirror image of democratic Athens, providing them with
a context within which to discuss social and political issues
that might prove too disturbing if dramatized within a
contemporary Athenian setting. By setting Antigone in Thebes, in
the remote, mythical past, Sophocles freed himself to explore
the tensions between personal freedom and legal restraint,
household and city, male and female—all tensions of keen
interest to contemporary Athenians, whose radically democratic
system of government involved a constant program of public
discussion and debate.  Royal palace  R