ORCHOMENUS, a city of Bœotia, and the capital of the powerful tribe the Minyæ, was situated near the western shore of the Copæ Lake, on a hill which overlooked the windings of the Cephissus. Its original inhabitants are said to have been Thessalian emigrants, and its ultimate name was derived from Orchomenus, one of the kings of the Minyæ. The city seems to have been powerful and important from the very first. Its wealth was likened by Homer to that of the Egyptian Thebes; its contingent of ships to the Trojan war amounted to thirty; it seems at one time to have had jurisdiction over the towns of the neighbourhood; and even when, shortly after the destruction of Troy, it was forced into the Bœotian confederacy, it was second among the allies to Thebes alone. The decline of Orchomenus may be said to have commenced in 395 B.C., when, averse to the democratic government of the Thebans, it took the field with Sparta in support of oligarchy. It is true that its cause triumphed at the battle of Coronea in 394 B.C., and that its independence was secured by the peace of Antalcidas in 387 B.C. Yet Thebes had contracted a deadly enmity against its former tributary, and only waited for an opportunity to inflict revenge. In 371 B.C. the victory of Leuctra, which restored to the Thebans their supremacy over Bœotia, afforded this opportunity. Orchomenus was destroyed, and its inhabitants were sold for slaves. It rose again not long afterwards, only to be destroyed in 346 B.C., by its implacable foes; and although its walls were rebuilt once more by the command of Philip of Macedon, it had sunk into ruins in the time of Strabo. When visited by Pausanias, the remains of Orchomenus contained a temple of Bacchus; the tomb of Hesiod; the tomb of Minyas, an ancient king of the town, who gave his name to the Minyæ; and a temple in which a famous festival in honour of the Graces had been wont to be held. The fortifications can still be traced near the village of Skripû. (Müller's Orchomenos und die Minyer; Leake's Northern Greece; and Mure's Tour in Greece.)