In antiquity, the area in C Greece bordering on Attica. Its chief city-state was Thebes. Its inhabitants were largely of Aeolian stock, and proverbial for their stupidity.
Boeotia or Beotia (IPA: [bi'o.ʃʌ], Greek Βοιωτία;
The oldest city of Greece was sited there and was named Graia (Γραία) which means ancient or old. From the name of this city the word "Greece" derives. Aristotle said that this city was created before the deluge. The same assertion about the origins of Graia city was found also in an ancient marble, the Parian Chronicle, discovered in 1687 and dated in 267-263 B.C., that is currently kept in Oxford and on Paros. Reports about this ancient city can be found also in Homer, in Pausanias, in Thucydides etc.
The main and most important city during history was Thebes of which it is said it was related to the Egyptian Thebes.
Boeotia had significant political importance, owing to its position on the north shore of the Gulf of Corinth, extending westwards between Thessaly and Peloponnesus to the Isthmus of Corinth;
In Greek mythology, Boeotia plays a prominent part. Of the two great centres of legends, Thebes, with its Cadmean population, figures as a military stronghold, and Orchomenos, the home of the Minyae, as an enterprising commercial city.
In historical times, the leading city of Boeotia was Thebes, whose central position and military strength made it a suitable capital; It was the constant ambition of the Thebans to absorb the other townships into a single state, just as Athens had annexed the Attic communities. But the outlying cities successfully resisted this policy, and only allowed the formation of a loose federation which, initially, was merely religious.
While the Boeotians, unlike the Arcadians, generally acted as a united whole against foreign enemies, the constant struggle between the cities was a serious check on the nation's development. In about 519 BC, the resistance of Plataea to the federating policy of Thebes led to the interference of Athens on behalf of the former;
During the Persian invasion of 480 BC, Thebes assisted the invaders. In consequence, for a time, the presidency of the Boeotian League was taken from Thebes, but in 457 BC the Spartans reinstated that city as a bulwark against Athenian aggression after the Battle of Tanagra. Athens retaliated by a sudden advance upon Boeotia, and after the victory at the Battle of Oenophyta took control of the whole country except the capital.
In the Peloponnesian War the Boeotians fought zealously against Athens.
About this time the Boeotian League comprised eleven groups of sovereign cities and associated townships, each of which elected one Boeotarch or minister of war and foreign affairs, contributed sixty delegates to the federal council at Thebes, and supplied a contingent of about a thousand foot and a hundred horse to the federal army. A safeguard against undue encroachment on the part of the central government was provided in the councils of the individual cities, to which all important questions of policy had to be submitted for ratification.
Boeotia took a prominent part in the war of the Corinthian League against Sparta, especially at Haliartus and the Battle of Coronea (395-394 BC). Yet disaffection against Thebes was now growing rife, and Sparta fostered this feeling by stipulating for the complete independence of all the cities in the peace of Antalcidas (387).
Boeotian contingents fought in all the campaigns of Epaminondas against the Spartans, most notably at the Battle of Leuctra in 371, and in the later wars against Phocis (356-346); while in the dealings with Philip of Macedon the cities merely followed Thebes.
The destruction of Thebes by Alexander the Great (335 BC) seems to have removed the political energy of the Boeotians. Though enrolled for a short time in the Aetolian League (about 245 BC) Boeotia was generally loyal to Macedon, and supported its later kings against Rome.
Pejorative term
As a result of Athens' proud assertion of its cultural superiority, first of all compared to its closest, rural neighbours (bad luck for them, there was no convincing reason), the word Boeotian or Beotian (the adjective derived from and word for the inhabitants of Boeotia) has been adopted in many classical and antique languages as a pejorative term for backward people, simpletons etc.
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