ABSTRACT
Boeotia, the province of Central Greece adjoining Attica to the north, ranked with the Argolid as an important centre for early heroic myth. In the mythology of Boeotia as in most of its history, Thebes was very much the dominant city, and most of the main legends of the land have therefore been recounted in Chapter 9 in connection with the mythical history of that city. The city of Orchomenos in the north-west, which controlled the fertile lowlands around the Copaic Lake, would have been a place of comparable significance in the Mycenaean period; it was proverbial for its wealth, which is compared to that of Egyptian Thebes in the Iliad.37 Its star declined, however, and its mythical record is disappointingly thin. In the Homeric epics and Greek tradition generally, it was regarded as the main home of the Minyans, an ancient people who were also associated with Iolkos in Thessaly. MINYAS, the eponym of the Minyans, was thought to have been an early ruler of Orchomenos. It was naturally assumed that he must have been extremely rich, and a Mycenaean beehive tomb in the city was identified as his treasure-house; Pausanias brackets it with the walls of Tiryns (also of Mycenaean origin) as a Greek monument which bears comparison with the pyramids of Egypt.38 For the story of the Minyades, three daughters of Minyas who scorned the rites of Dionysos when they were first introduced to Orchomenos, see p. 174. Minyas was credited with various other children, including Orchomenos, the eponym of the city, and Elara, the mother of the gigantic Tityos (see p. 147), and Klymene, the wife of Phylakos and maternal grandmother of Jason.
