THEBES consisted of the upper town (Καδμεία) and the lower town. The acra had a considerable circumference, though not as it appears in the plan of Barbié du Bocage in St. Croix’ work on the historians of Alexander the Great; that plan is thoroughly misleading, for its author imagines that the acra was situated in the centre of the city, and that the lower town was built concentrically around it. According to the description of the siege by the Macedonians, given by Diodorus and Arrian, this is impossible: one side of the acra unquestionably faced the open fields, and only about two-thirds or three-fourths of it were surrounded by the lower town. The acropolis was called Καδμεία, but the ancients gave it the name of Thebes, so that in the Homeric Catalogue, the city of Thebes below the then destroyed Cadmea was called Ὑποθῆβαι. The seven gates which have become so renowned from the tragedy of Aeschylus, and the Phoenissae of Euripides, existed in the Cadmea: the gates of the lower town may not have corresponded with them, or may have been made to correspond in later times. Thebes continued to increase until Olymp. 111, 2, when it was destroyed by Alexander. The city is said to have had a circumference of 80 stadia, that is, ten English miles; but this is incredible: all we know about the fate of the city shows that it is impossible, or else we are not allowed to draw any conclusion from the circumference of a Greek city as to its population; for Diodorus expressly states, that the number of all the prisoners, after the capture of Thebes, was 30,000, including every age and sex, and probably also every rank, free men, metoeci, and slaves. I have already expressed my opinion concerning the foolish supposition about the enormous number of slaves. I admit the possibility, that at Athens, especially in the city, the number of slaves was greater than that of free men; I admit this with special reference to the anecdote, that the proposal made at Athens, that slaves should wear a particular kind of dress, was rejected for the purpose of preventing their seeing how great their numbers were. But the same reason would have been valid if the number of slaves had been less. The Attic peasant was αὐτουργός, he certainly had no slaves, and the majority of the Athenians were altogether too poor to be able to keep such numbers of slaves. If their numbers had been as excessive as is stated, the institutions at Athens would have been quite different.