Chapter XIV (4)

[181] If Sparta had been careless as to whether Athens medized or not, she might, probably would, have despatched troops to the Isthmus at an earlier date. But if she was waiting until pressure of circumstances forced Athens to adopt Peloponnesian views as to the line of defence, then the delay is accounted for. Had her army been at the Isthmus when Mardonius advanced into Bœotia, the Athenians would certainly have called upon it to carry out the agreement, and march to the northward of Kithæron. In that case the Spartan government would have been obliged either to comply, or, by a refusal, to show in the most unmistakeable manner possible the war policy which it intended to adopt.

[182] I was, I confess, surprised to find in August, 1899, that, in spite of the excellent road to Megara from Bœotia by the way of Eleusis, the track on the old line of the Platæa-Megara road is still largely used.

[183] A road has been constructed through it in recent years, running from Kriekouki on the Bœotian side to Villa on the south of the range.

[184] I am inclined to think that the site of Skolos is that which Leake, and others following him, have identified with Erythræ. Paus. ix. 4, 3, says that if before crossing the Asopos river on the road from Platæa to Thebes, you turned off down the stream, and went about forty stades, _i.e._ four and three-quarter miles, you came to the ruins of Skolos. This would place it not far east of the road from Thebes to Dryoskephalæ. He speaks of Skolos in another passage as a village of Parasopia beneath Kithæron, a rugged place, and δυσοικητός. That seems to preclude the idea of its being near the river, which traverses alluvial lands at this part of its course. The ruins identified by Leake as Erythræ cannot belong to that town if the testimony of Herodotus and Pausanias is accurately worded. This point will be discussed in a later note. In actual fact, however, the exact site of Skolos is very difficult to determine. My main reason for suggesting that it stood where Leake places Erythræ is that those ruins are the only ruins in the neighbourhood indicated by Pausanias, and are certainly not the ruins of Erythræ.

[185] It is necessary to pursue so obvious a line of argument, because, for some incomprehensible reason, modern historians have thought it right to judge of the plans of these able Persian commanders as though they were dictated by no higher considerations than such as might occur to an untutored savage.

[186] The weakness of this line in case of attack from the north was conclusively shown twenty years later in the manœuvres which led to the battle of Tanagra.

[187] It is almost certain that an ancient road from Eleusis followed the eminently natural line taken by the modern road from Eleusis to Eleutheræ. There was also, in all probability, a route from Athens to Eleutheræ which did not enter Eleusis at all, but, branching from the Sacred Way near the Rheitoi after traversing the low pass through Mount Ægaleos, went up the Thriasian plain and joined the road from Eleusis among the low hills of Western Attica.

[188] These ridges will be found numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, in the accompanying map.

[189] Marked A 6 in the map.

[190] Called in the map, for purposes of distinction, the Asopos ridge, the Long ridge, and the Plateau.

[191] Those of the streams marked A 4 and A 5 on the map.

[192] During my stay at Kriekouki, in December ’92–January ’93, the rainfall was at times extraordinarily heavy. Nevertheless, I had not on any occasion the slightest difficulty in crossing any of the streams, and it was not even necessary to get wet in so doing. On one occasion also I happened to be following the line of one of the watercourses leading to the Œroë amid a downpour of rain such as we rarely see in England, which had been going on with more or less continuity for the previous fourteen hours; and yet, as I descended the brook towards the plain the water became less and less until, on the plain, there was no water running in the stream bed.

[193] Pausanias knew the roads through these two passes.

(1) Platæa-Athens road.

He says (xi. 1, 6) that Neokles, the Bœotarch, in his surprise of Platæa in the year 374, led the Thebans οὐ τὴν εὐθεῖαν ἀπὸ τῶν Θηβῶν τὴν πεδιάδα, τὴν δὲ ἐπὶ Ὑσιὰς ἦγε πρὸς Ἐλευθερῶν τε καὶ τῆς Ἀττικῆς.

There will be occasion to show that Hysiæ was in all probability a small place, on a site just outside the southernmost end of the village of Kriekouki. It was therefore at the eastern side of the opening of the valley through which the road from Platæa to Athens passed. The remains of that ancient road are, however, at the other side of the valley opening; and, therefore, Hysiæ was not upon it. Probably, however, down the valley came a track which is still used, and which, after passing through the village of Kriekouki, goes due north to Thebes in a line parallel to the main road from Dryoskephalæ. This would be the road which Pausanias here mention. It would, in entering the valley to the pass, go close to this site of Hysiæ. Of the identity of this site it will be necessary to speak in a later note.

In 379, after the revolution in Thebes (X. H. v. 4, 14), the Spartans despatched Kleombrotos with a force to Bœotia. As Chabrias, with Athenian peltasts, was guarding “the road through Eleutheræ,” he went, κατὰ τὴν εἰς Πλαταιὰς φέρουσαν.

This is almost certainly the Platæa-Athens pass. Kleombrotos probably did not discover that the Dryoskephalæ pass was guarded until he got to Eleutheræ. After doing so he turned to the left and made his way through the Platæa-Athens pass, exterminating a small body of troops which attempted to defend it.

(2) The Platæa-Megara road.

Pausanias (ix. 2, 3) says, Τοῖς δὲ ἐκ Μεγάρων ἰοῦσι πηγή τέ ἐστιν ἐν δεξιᾷ καὶ προελθοῦσιν ὀλίγον πέτρα· καλοῦσι δὲ τὴν μὲν Ἀκταίωνος κοίτην.

In the previous sentence he has expressly spoken of the road from Eleutheræ to Platæa. The Megara road is therefore a different road. The κοὶτη Ἀκταίωνος can, I think, be determined with sufficient certainty at the present day. It is on the top of a low cliff, probably the πέτρα mentioned, overhanging the sources of the stream O 3. Near the foot of the cliff is an ancient well, known in Leake’s time as the Vergutiani Spring.

[194] Ἐπὶ τῆς ὑπωρέης τοῦ Κιθαιρῶνος.

[195] The site of Erythræ.

Colonel Leake identified it with certain ruins which are found at the foot of the mountain slope several miles east of the road from Dryoskephalæ to Thebes. The available evidence seems to me to be strongly against this view.

(1) The traditional site is where I have placed it, though I am afraid that but little stress can be laid on traditions in modern Greece.

(2) Its comparatively frequent mention by Greek writers seems to indicate that, though a small place, its position was of some importance. If Leake’s view be correct this cannot have been the case. If it were where I believe it to have been, it would be at the northern exit of one of the most important passes in Greece. There is an ancient φρουρίον on the bastion of Kithæron to the east of the site. Its remains are so scanty, however, that they do not afford any clue as to its date.

(3) There are remains of ancient buildings on the site. There are also remains of an ancient well, besides which is a heap of stones, from which two stones were obtained a few years ago with inscriptions showing them to have belonged to a temple of Eleusinian Demeter. Pausanias mentions so many temples in the neighbourhood dedicated to that deity, that the discovery contributes but little to the identification of the site. I was informed at Kriekouki last year (August, 1899) that those particular stones were known to have been originally discovered on another site. As neither my informant nor any one else could tell me whence, why, or by whom they were removed, I did not place much credence in the report.

(4) Pausanias says (ix. 2, 1), Γῆς δὲ τῆς Πλαταιίδος ἐν τῶ Κιθαιρῶνι ὀλίγον τῆς εὐθείας ἐκτραπεῖσιν ἐς δεξιὰν Ὑσιῶν καὶ Ἐρυθρῶν ἐρείπιά ἐστι; and further on (ix. 2, 2), he says, referring to the road of which he is speaking: αὕτη μὲν (_i.e._ ὅδος) ἀπ’ Ἐλευθερῶν ἐς Πλάταιαν ἄγει. The road referred to is of course the Athens-Platæa road, on which he is travelling towards Platæa. Can any one suppose that Pausanias would have used the expression quoted, especially the word ὀλίγον, had the ruins of Erythræ, as Leake conjectured, lain some three and a half miles away from the nearest point of this road, and hidden from it, moreover, by the great projecting bastion of Kithæron, which is shown at the south-east corner of the accompanying map?

Leake quotes Thucydides (iii. 24), who says that the two hundred and twelve fugitives from Platæa first took the Thebes road in order to put their pursuers off the scent, and then turning, ᾔεσαν τὴν πρὸς τὸ ὄρος φέρουσαν ὁδόν ἐς Ἐρύθρας καὶ Ὑσιάς, καὶ λαβόμενοι τῶν ὀρῶν διαφεύγουσιν ἐς τὰς Ἀθήνας. Meanwhile the pursuers were searching the road along the ὐπωρέη. This last road would lead the pursuers near the site where I conjecture Hysiæ to have stood, and the objection may be raised that it is unlikely that the fugitives would have gone to a place close to the road along which they could see the pursuers were searching for them. It is, however, to be remarked that Thucydides does _not_ say that they went to either Erythræ or Hysiæ. Had he intended to imply this he would have mentioned those places in their proper order, Hysiæ first and Erythræ second. Whenever he refers to the actual _course_ taken by a body of men, or by a fleet, he invariably mentions the places _touched at_ or _arrived at_ in their geographical order. _Vide_ Th. ii. 48, 1; ii. 56, 5; ii. 69, 1; iv. 5, 2; vii. 2, 2; vii. 31, 2.

The passage seems perfectly comprehensible and in accord with the hypothesis which I put forward with respect to the positions of Hysiæ and Erythræ. These fugitives, turning from the Platæa-Thebes road, took the track which in modern times leads from Pyrgos to Kriekouki, and which in ancient times would be the road from Thespiæ to Hysiæ, Erythræ, and the passes. They did not go _to_ but _towards_ those places, making in reality for those high rugged bastions to the north-east of the pass of Dryoskephalæ.

But, after all, Pausanias’ words in the passage quoted dispose effectively of Colonel Leake’s site. He would not have described a place twenty-five stades away from the road as a _short_ distance to the right of it.

(5) Herodotus (ix. 15) speaks of the Persian camp as ἀρξάμενον ἀπὸ Ἐρυθρέων παρὰ Ὑσιάς, κατέτεινε δὲ ἐς τὴν Πλαταίιδα γῆν. These words merely show that Erythræ was east of Hysiæ.

(6) Perhaps one of the strongest pieces of evidence is Herodotus’ statement that the first Greek position was “at Erythræ.” Is it conceivable that the Greek force, especially in its then state of feeling with regard to the Persians, would be likely, after issuing from the pass of Dryoskephalæ, to turn east along Kithæron, leave the pass open, and take up a position with their backs to a part of the range through which there was no passage of retreat?

(7) We are told later that their reason for moving to their second position was the question of water-supply. This accords with the present state of the locality about the traditional Erythræ. The streams in that neighbourhood have but little water in them in the dry season.

(8) The ground in this neighbourhood accords peculiarly with the description given by Herodotus of the first engagement.

[196] Marked ridges 1, 2, 3, 4, in the map.

[197] These positions will be found marked upon the accompanying map. It is necessary, however, to explain the evidence on which they are determined.

[198] The details of the contingents given by Herodotus are:—

Lacedæmonians—
Spartans 5000
Periœki 5000
Helots 35,000
Tegeans 1500
Corinthians 5000
Potidæans 300
Orchomenians (Arcadia) 600
Sikyonians 3000
Epidaurians 800
Trœzenians 1000
Lepreans 200
Mykenæans and Tirynthians 400
Phliasians 1000
Hermionians 300
Eretrians and Styreans 600
Chalkidians 400
Ambrakiots 500
Leukadians and Anaktorians 800
Paleans from Kephallenia 200
Æginetans 500
Megareans 3000
Platæans 600
Athenians 8000
Miscellaneous light-armed troops 34,500
======
Total 108,200

[199] _I.e._ A 1. In the days before scientific survey there was frequently the utmost confusion with regard to the application of names to the head streams of main rivers. This generally took the form of applying the name of the main stream to several of its feeders. The tendency of the local population was to apply the well-known name to that upper tributary which was in their immediate neighbourhood, and was therefore best known to them. Examples of this are frequent in England; the upper waters of the Thames are a case in point. In early sketch maps it will be found that the name Thames is applied with the utmost diversity to the head streams of the river, and even a tributary so far down as the Evenlode is sometimes given the name of the main river. This is, I fancy, what has taken place with regard to the Asopos. The Platæans, with whom Herodotus must have come in contact in the course of his visit to the region, called this stream, A 1, by the name of the main river, and consequently “Asopos” in Herodotus is to be understood to mean this stream up to its junction with the stream which comes from the west, rising not far from Leuktra, and, after that, to refer to what is really the main river. From Platæa itself the course of this stream is plainly traceable in the plain, running along the western base of the Asopos ridge. The stream coming from Leuktra is not visible, and it is quite conceivable that Herodotus never had any definite knowledge of its existence. In Leake’s time (_vide_ his sketch map) the inhabitants of Kriekouki seem to have called the stream, A 6, Asopos. It is not so called at the present day. My own impression is, however, that Herodotus, although he heard the Platæans speak of A 1 as the Asopos, may in one passage refer to the stream from Leuktra with a special attribute: τὸν Ἀσωπὸν τὸν ταύτῃ ῥέοντα (♠H. ix. 31). A sentence previously, at the end of ♥Chapter 30, he has a reference to the Asopos without any qualification, οὗτοι μὲν νὺν ταχθέντες ἐπὶ τῷ Ἀσωπῷ ἐστρατοπεδἐυοντο, and this reference is undoubtedly to A 1, which is to him, as other references in his narrative show, the upper Asopos “ordinarily so called.”

♠ “H. ix. 26” replaced with “H. ix. 31”
♥ “Chapter 25” replaced with “Chapter 30”

[200] H. ix. 31, _ad init._, πυθόμενοι τοὺς Ἕλληνας εἶναι ἐν Πλαταιῇσι.

[201] Cf. especially the mention of the Asopos and its context in