The Greeks believed that the first city-state, or polis, to appear in the world was Thebes in Boeotia.242 The family of its founder, hero Cadmus, could claim among its members the only Olympian god with mortal blood in his veins. It was notorious for internecine dynastic wars, curses, and homicides that for catastrophic generational ruin matched even those of Tantalus and the doomed house of Atreus. If they weren’t casseroling their children, they were sacrificing them; while those who made it to adulthood, if they weren’t committing incest with their parents were murdering them.
