Those who have visited the field since I was there in 1892 seem to be agreed that I was right in my identification of the “Island.”
The distance of the eastern springs from the “Island” is just about ten stade. Apotripi is about the same distance from it.
Herodotus says (ix. 52) that the spring was twenty stades from the Ἥραιον which, he says, is πρὸ τῆς πόλιος τῆς Πλαταιέων. The eastern springs are sixteen stades from the approximate position of that temple; Apotripi is but twelve stades off.
It will, I think, be seen that the evidence of Herodotus is in favour of the eastern springs.
The Precinct of the Hero Androkrates.
The evidence of Thucydides enables us to determine approximately the position of this Heroön. He says (iii. 24) that the two hundred and twelve who escaped made their way from Platæa
“along the road leading to Thebes, having on their right the hero-chapel of Androkrates ... and for six or seven stades the Platæans advanced along the Thebes road, and then, turning, went along the road leading to the mountain to Erythræ and Hysiæ.”
This can only mean that the Heroön was in the angle between the road to Thebes and the road to the mountains; and as these people only went about three-quarters of a mile along the Thebes road, it is evident that, if Thucydides be correct, the Heroön was to the right of the road and within three-quarters of a mile of Thebes. I have marked in the map the conjectural site of the building on the extremity of the last low ridge of the mountain before it sinks into the plain. There are at that point the remains of what has been an oblong building constructed of good squared blocks. I am almost certain that it is Hellenic work.
Mr. W. J. Woodhouse, in a recent number of the Journal of Hellenic Studies (Part I. 1898), dissents from my view as to the position of the Heroön of Androkrates.
His argument is as follows:—