Note 184 — Chapter XI · THE CAMPAIGN OF PLATÆA.

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.