the end of the LH IIIB period recalls the Hypothebai (or "sub-Thebes") of the Homeric Catalogue of the Ships (Iliad ii 505), but we have no reliable indications as to where this residual "lower town" may have been located." The Homeric Hypothebai may have been the seed of the Archaic and Classical polity of Thebes when the city was reestablished in earnest.

Archaic and classical periods

As attested already in Homer's Iliad, Thebes was often called "Seven-Gated Thebes"

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