Thebe (Ancient Greek: Θήβη) is a feminine name mentioned several times in Greek mythology, in accounts that imply multiple female characters, four of whom are said to have had three cities named Thebes after them:
- Thebe, eponym of Thebes, Egypt.[1] She was the daughter of either Nilus, Proteus,[2] or Libys, son of Epirus.[citation needed] In another account, Thebe was called the daughter of Zeus and Iodame and was given in marriage to Ogygus by her father after Deucalion’s flood.[3] She was the sister of another Deucalion.[4] One rare version of the myth makes Thebe a consort of Zeus and mother of Aegyptus[5] and/or Heracles.[6]
- Thebe, daughter of Asopus[2] and Metope,[7] who was said to have consorted with Zeus.[8] Amphion and Zethus named Boeotian Thebes[9] after her because of their kinship, the twins being sons of her sister Antiope by Zeus. Egyptian Thebes was also named after her.[2]
- Thebe, daughter of Zeus and Megacleite[10] and sister of Locrus, the man who assisted Amphion and Zethus in the building of Thebes.[11] She later on married Zethus.
- Thebe, daughter of Prometheus, and also a possible eponym of the Boeotian Thebes.[12]
- Thebe, daughter of Cilix[13] and thus, sister of Thasus.[14] By Corybas,[13] son of Cybele, she was the possible mother of Ida who begat Minos II by King Lycastus of Crete.[15] This Thebe is possibly the eponym of Cilician Thebe.
- Thebe, daughter of the Pelasgian Adramys, the eponym of Adramyttium[16] or of the river god Granicus[citation needed]. She married Heracles, who named Hypoplacian Thebes after her.[16]
- Thebe, an Amazon. [citation needed]
- Thebe, alternate name for the Titaness Phoebe.[citation needed]
- ^ Nonnus, 4.304, 5.86 & 41.270
- ^ a b c Scholia ad Homer, Iliad 9.383
- ^ Tzetzes on Lycophron, 1206 with the historian Lycus as the authority
- ^ Murray, John (1833). A Classical Manual, being a Mythological, Historical and Geographical Commentary on Pope's Homer, and Dryden's Aeneid of Virgil with a Copious Index. Albemarle Street, London. p. 8.
- ^ Tzetzes ad Lycophron, 1206.
- ^ John Lydus, De mensibus 4.67
- ^ Diodorus Siculus, 4.72.1; Pausanias, 2.5.2
- ^ Pausanias, 5.22.6
- ^ Apollodorus, 3.5.6
- ^ Pseudo-Clement, Recognitions 10.21
- ^ Eustathius ad Homer, p. 1688
- ^ Stephanus of Byzantium, s.v. Thēbē (Θήβη)
- ^ a b Diodorus Siculus, 5.49.3
- ^ Apollodorus, 3.1.1 with Pherecydes as the authority
- ^ Diodorus Siculus, 4.60.3.
- ^ a b Scholia on Homer, Iliad 6.397