We left Thebes, very glad that we had seen it, but not very curious to see it again. Its site makes it obviously the natural capital of the rich plain around it; and we can also see at once how the larger and richer plain of Orchomenus is separated from it by a distinct saddle of rising ground, and was naturally, in old times, the seat of a separate power. But the separation between the two districts, which is not even so steep or well marked as the easy pass of Daphne between Athens and Eleusis, makes it also clear that the owners of either plain would certainly cast the eye of desire upon the possessions of their neighbors, and so at an early epoch Orchomenus was subdued. For many reasons this may have been a disaster to Greece. The Minyæ of Orchomenus, as people called the old nobles who settled there in prehistoric days, were a great and rich society, building forts and treasure-houses, and celebrated, even in Homer’s day, for wealth and splendor. But, perhaps owing to this very luxury, they were subdued by the inartistic, vulgar Thebans, who, during centuries of power and importance, never rose to greatness save through the transcendent genius of Pindar and of Epaminondas. No real greatness ever attached to their town. When people came from a distance to see art in Bœotia, they came to little Thespiæ, in the southern hills, where the Eros of Praxiteles was the pride of the citizens. Tanagra, too, in the terra cottas of which I have spoken (above, p. 59), shows taste and refinement; and we still look with sympathy upon the strangely modern fashions of these graceful and elegant figures. At Thebes, so far as I know, no trace of fine arts has yet been discovered. The great substructure of the Cadmea, the solid marble water-pipes of their conduits, a few inscriptions—that is all. It corroborates what we find in the middle and new comedy of the Greeks, that Thebes was a place for eating and drinking, a place for other coarse material comforts—but no place for real culture or for art. Even their great poet, Pindar, a poet in whom most critics find all the highest qualities of genius—loftiness, daring, originality—even this great man—no doubt from the accidents of his age—worked by the job, and bargained for the payment of his noblest odes.