Note 193 — Chapter XI · THE CAMPAIGN OF PLATÆA.
Reading edition
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.