The matter, however, is so uncertain, that it is impossible to insist on either of these two identifications against the other.
The name Argiopian has been supposed to mean “white rock,” and, adopting this interpretation, one visitor to the region has discovered that there is a patch of white rock on the side of Kithæron which is a prominent object from the plain. As we were in August, 1899, encamped in the plain near the head of brook A 5, I had ample opportunity for observing the north slope of Kithæron. No such patch was then visible on the dull grey-green rock slopes of the mountain. As to the interpretation of the name I am, I confess, sceptical. The interpretation of place-names in Greece, as elsewhere, is a most dangerous though fascinating pastime; and it is but too often the case that the most obvious interpretation is the most incorrect. All, I think, that can be safely assumed in the present instance is that the Argiopian country was a stretch of land marked off in some way from its surroundings, and I venture to think that either the Long Ridge or the Plateau has sufficient peculiarities, quâ ground, to render it possible that either of them might in ancient times have been known by a distinctive local name.
The temple of Eleusinian Demeter is a more important landmark in the history of the battle.
I venture to think that the ruins of the church of St. Demetrion are probably on or near the site of that temple, and that the τέμενος of the temple was on the flat top of that mound of the Long Ridge. The reasons which may be adduced for this identification are as follows:—
(a) The Christians, in cases in which they adopted an ancient temple, or the site of an ancient temple, for a church, were apt, in dedicating the new sanctuary, to make a pious pun on the dedication of the pre-existing pagan shrine. This kind of nomenclature has been peculiarly common in Greece.
(b) It is true that Pausanias mentions several temples of Eleusinian Demeter as having existed in this immediate neighbourhood, no one of which can be supposed to have stood in this position.
But it is also clear that the temple mentioned by Herodotus is not any one of these mentioned by Pausanias.
Cf. Paus. ix. 4, 2, at Platæa; ix. 4, 3, at Skolos; ix. 9, 1, Grove of Demeter at Potniæ on the road from Thebes to Platæa, ten stades from Thebes, i.e. about sixty stades from Platæa.
The omission of Pausanias to mention the one to which I refer may possibly be accounted for by the fact that it lay, if I am right, not near the great road from Athens to Thebes, viâ Dryoskephalæ, but near the alternative and probably much less frequented route between the two towns by way of the Platæa-Athens pass.
(c) Pausanias (ix. 2, 6) says: “The trophy of the battle of Platæa which the Greeks set up stood about fifteen stades from the city.”