(1) The Persian cavalry could not damage the Greeks so much in the former position, because—
(2) They would not attack them on the front
Applying (1) to this conjectured νῆσος, I have no hesitation in saying that the stream-beds which bound it afford no serious obstacles to cavalry for at least ninety out of every hundred yards of their course. A horse could cross them in most places without even easing from its gallop, and, apart from this, the effectiveness of the recent attacks of the Persian cavalry had been due to the fact that it had been fighting with missiles and not at close quarters, as Herodotus expressly says. The Greeks could not have faced them across a watercourse a yard or two broad, so as to be able to prevent their passing it, even had the passage been a work of some difficulty to a mounted man. If further argument on this point be necessary, I can only say that it is impossible to conceive how the generals of the Greeks, having found the Asopos an utterly insufficient protection, could have supposed that the army would be in safety behind these much slighter watercourses. Have the stream-beds altered in character? If any alteration has taken place, it can only have taken the form of the raising of the plain by earth brought down from the uplands, the result of which would be that the channels would be deeper now than at the time of the battle.
Condition (9, 2).—Had the Greek position been on this ground, the attack would certainly have been on the front.
BŒOTIAN PLAIN, FROM PLATÆA-MEGARA PASS.
PLATÆA—WEST SIDE OF Νῆσος.
[To face page [482].
There is another point mentioned by Herodotus which is very difficult to reconcile with the location of the νῆσος in the position in which Leake and Vischer place it. “ISLAND” OF LEAKE AND VISCHER. He says (ix. 56) that when the Athenians and Lacedæmonians did actually begin their movement thither, οἱ μὲν (the Lacedæmonians) τῶν τε ὄχθων ἀντείχοντο καὶ τῆς ὑπωρέης του Κιθαιρῶνος, φοβεόμενοι τὴν ἵππον. Ἀθηναῖοι δὲ κάτω τραφ θέντες ἐς τὸ πεδίον, etc.