Both Leake (“Northern Greece”) and Vischer (“Erinnerungen aus Griechenland”) identify a strip of flat ground, lying in the plain due north of the site of the town of Platæa between two of the stream-beds of the Œroë, as the “Island” of which Herodotus speaks.
This identification may be tested by the facts given by Herodotus:
- (1) This piece of ground is ten stades from A 1, which, as I have said, is apparently the upper part of the Asopos of Herodotus. (It is thirteen or fourteen stades from the branch of the river which comes down from Leuktra.)
- (2) It is considerably over ten stades, viz. fifteen or sixteen stades, from the spring which Leake identifies, rightly, as I think, with the Gargaphia.
- (3) It is before or in full view of the city of Platæa.
- (4) The words used by Herodotus do not seem to be those which he might have been expected to use in describing this piece of land. The streams divide at a point more than two miles above this.
- (5) (6) (7) are adequately fulfilled by it.
It is when we come to (8) and (9), which are the very reasons stated by Herodotus for the movement to the “Island,” that the position indicated absolutely fails to accord with the conditions.
In respect to water supply it is conspicuously deficient; and of the three streams which cross the plain at this point one was absolutely dry at the time of my visit (Dec., 1892); and this one was that which would have formed the side of the “Island” towards the Persian army, viz. O 1.
The second contained water, but in a much less quantity than before it entered the plain. The third contained water also, but not in any quantity.
This was at a period of peculiarly heavy rains.
In September all of them would almost certainly be dry by the time they reached this part of the plain. O 1, being a pure drainage stream, would be, under ordinary circumstances, dry along its whole course at that time of year.
There would, under no conceivable circumstances, have been water enough in this conjectured νῆσος, at that time of year, to supply an army one-tenth the number of the Greek force. We cannot even assume exceptionally heavy rain (a most extraordinary circumstance in the month of September), for in that case the lands of the Asopos would have been impassable for cavalry, and even infantry would have been unable to cross them. I speak from personal experience. I wanted to get down to the river, in order to get points of survey upon it, since its course is not distinguishable with certainty, even from a furlong off; but after getting into plough, into which I sank above my knees, and after my Albanian servant had come down and nearly disappeared with my plane table, I gave it up. I could not reach it at that point; and that part of the Asopos had to remain marked in my map by a dotted line which, although it gives the course very nearly, does not pretend to the same accuracy as the rest of the map.
Condition (9) really contains two conditions.