- (1) If the Heroön lay hard by the road, constituting a familiar landmark, Thucydides’ remark is pointless.
- (2) There were two other roads from Platæa to Thebes, viz. those through Dryoskephalæ and the Pass on the Platæa-Athens road respectively.
- (3) Plutarch places the Heroön near the ancient temple of Demeter.
Mr. Woodhouse accordingly suggests that the Heroön stood on the site of the church of St. John, on the Asopos ridge.
I would point out:—
- (1) That Thucydides’ language [iii. 24] is not pointless, even if the Heroön be near “the road leading to Thebes,” inasmuch as he indicates a point near the road which the fugitives certainly passed before they turned to the right, and thus diminishes the comparative vagueness of the “six or seven stades” which follow. It does not seem unnatural that he should wish to make quite clear the fact that they passed the Heroön before they turned, i.e. that it lay within the angle through which they turned. I would also point out, that it is not the fact of the Heroön being on the right of the road, which Thucydides emphasizes, but it being on the right of the Platæans as they went along the road. The site of the church of St. John is eighteen stades from Platæa. Thucydides would hardly say that persons who only went “six or seven stades” along this road ever had that site upon their right hand.
- (2) The alternative routes Mr. Woodhouse mentions are alternative routes from Platæa in much the same sense that the route by Bletchley is an alternative railway route from Oxford to London. “The road leading [from Platæa] to Thebes” could only mean the ordinary direct road. An author using that expression would not imagine that his meaning could be doubtful.
- (3) Plutarch’s topography of Platæa is quite hopeless. It was evidently not a side of historical inquiry in which he took the slightest real interest
PRECINCT OF ANDROKRATES.
There can be little doubt that the Greek army on descending from the hillside of Kithæron proceeded to form in something resembling order of battle on the low ground near the bottom of the depression which extends across the field, or on the flattish ridge which forms the watershed between the Œroë and the Asopos. In this position their left would be near, but probably north of the hero-chapel of Androkrates; their right would be near the Gargaphia. The position of the centre and the right would, moreover, be “on hills of no great height;” that is to say, on the lower ends of the ridges which come down from Kithæron, while their left would be in the plain before Platæa, the “level country” of which Herodotus speaks. On this ground they would be completely hidden from the Persian camp by the intervening ridges to the north of them, which rise a hundred and twenty feet above the Gargaphia spring, and much more than that above the plain of Platæa.
This first phase or development of the second position of the Greeks was probably not of long duration. The nature of the ground provides an explanation of it. After completing this march from the first position, the Greeks seem to have been anxious to form their army in something like order of battle before ascending to the summit of the northern ridges (the Asopos ridge), for on arriving there they would be in full view of the enemy, and at no great distance from the Persian camp. In other words, they deployed their army out of sight of the enemy.
There seems to have been a certain amount of quarrelling between the various contingents as to the order to be taken in the line of battle. NUMBERS OF THE GREEK ARMY. Herodotus describes at some length such a dispute between the Tegeans and Athenians as to who should take position on the extreme left; but then he dearly loved that kind of traditional history which he represents the two disputants as having introduced into their arguments.
The matter was decided in favour of the Athenians. It is clear that the Greeks at this time had a high opinion of the fighting qualities of the people which had faced the Persians alone at Marathon.