1. Plataea in mythology

Although Plataea came to the forefront of historical developments because of the famous battle joined there in 479 BC, the city was mentioned in Homer, in the ‘Catalogue of ships’. Archaeological finds from its acropolis indicate human habitation reaching back at least to the Neolithic period, while according to a tradition, the name of the city originated from Plataea, daughter of the mythical king Asopus. In one of the many myths about Zeus’ infidelities and Hera’s jealousy, Zeus once let it slip that he intended to marry Plataea, just to elicit reaction from Hera, who had abandoned him and had taken refuge at Euboea. Indeed, Hera rushed to see whether these rumours were true. She decided to pay a surprise visit to the bride in the carriage that was transporting her, only to find a woman’s effigy. Amused by Zeus’ artifice, she forgave him and returned to him. Hera was considered the patron goddess of Plataea. Every 7 years the Lesser Daedala games were held there, while according to Pausanias a statue of Hera Nympheuomene, a work by Callimachus, stood in the city; it commemorated the mythical anecdote about her reconciliation with Zeus.

2. The ancient city of Plataea and its rivalry with Thebes

Plataea was situated on the northern foothills of Mt Cithaeron, occupying a strategic location on the routes connecting Boeotia with Attica and the Peloponnese. Endowed with the fertile plain of Asopus and abundant water sources, the city expanded and became powerful, growing safely in a naturally protected site on the foothills.

Precisely because of its strategic importance, Plataea became embroiled in the rivalries of the great city-states, Athens, Thebes and Sparta; all three tried to assert supremacy over the city or sought to strike an alliance with it. By 519 BC Plataea was prospering having just managed to shake off Thebes’ hegemony, and sought the protection of the Athenians, entering into an alliance with them. From that point on the Plataeans were granted citizen rights in Athens. In the Persian Wars, its rivalry with Thebes (the city had sided with the Persians), and its strong ties to Athens led Plataea to participate in the Battle of Marathon (490 BC) and later, in 480 BC, to contribute in the manning of the Greek fleet at the naval Battle at Artemisium. Following the departure of the fleet from Artemisium, the Plataeans were forced to abandon their city which was razed by Xerxes’ army.

In the following year, the most decisive battle of the Persian Wars was fought close to the ruined city. The Spartan king Pausanias and the allied Greek cities emerged triumphant; the engagement passed into history as the Battle of Plataea; the city was rebuilt and henceforth enjoyed a special protective status of guaranteed independence. Following their victory, the Greeks erected an altar in honour of Zeus Eleutherios. In later years the Eleutheria Games were instituted; these remained popular until the Roman era, notwithstanding the city’s dwindling size. The Eleutheria were held every 4 years and the celebrations concluded with a hoplite race from the Altar of Zeus Eleutherios to the trophy which stood at the battlefield (15 stadia, almost 3 km).

In the following decades Plataea prospered and was a member of the Boeotian League, until the eve of the Peloponnesian War, when Thebes tried to forcefully gain control of the city aided by a group of disgruntled Plataean oligarchs. Plataea resisted capture while Athens rushed to its aid and evacuated the non-combatants. At the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, Plataea was on the side of Athens whereas Thebes had aligned itself with the Spartans. In 429 BC, seeking to deprive Athens of its base of operations in Boeotia, the Spartans laid siege to and blockaded Plataea; the siege lasted two years and ended with the surrender of the remaining defenders. In 426 BC the Thebans razed the city again, and installed there people from Megara. Few Plataeans lingered, with the majority having sought refuge at Athens, where they enjoyed citizen rights. Sometime after 421 the Athenians granted them the lands of Scione.

In the Corinthian War (395-387 BC) Thebes and Athens were allies, forming a unitary front against Sparta. Following the Peace of Antalcidas, and with Thebes having turned against Sparta, the Spartans re-founded Plataea in 386, in the context of their greater strategic objectives in Boeotia. The Plataeans managed to return to their city, but they were ousted once again by the Thebans in 374/3 BC. Thebes’ victory over the Spartans in the Battle of Leuctra (371 BC) sealed the fate of the Plataeans; bereft of powerful protectors they were exiled until 338 BC, when they finally returned to their homeland after the defeat of the Theban and Athenian armies by the Macedonians at Chaeronea. Later, in the 3rd cent. BC, the poet Posidippus wrote that Plataea became a city only during the Eleutheria Games, being deserted during the rest of the time.

2.1. Archaeological remains

Of the other remains of the ancient city, the fortifications are best preserved. The earliest section is that of the acropolis walls, dating to the first decades of the 5th cent. BC, although it is not clear whether it predates or antedates the destruction brought about by the Persians in 480 BC. The larger city walls, fortified at intervals by towers, were later and apparently date to the period of the city’s re-foundation by Philip II, after the destruction of Thebes in 335 BC, when Arrian claims it was decided to fortify Plataea. Even later is the south Hellenistic transverse wall, which left out the southern part of the 4th cent. walls, and which is nowadays crossed by a modern road leading from the new city of Plataea to Erythres. Inside the defensive walls, the remains of the Hellenistic city are preserved. In the central part of the city the remains of a large public building and the ruins of a Doric temple stand out; judging from the site, these were already in use in the 4th cent. BC, although by then they were outside the walls. Herodotus mentioned a Temple of Hera which stood in front of the city of Plataea; his testimony lends further support to this tentative identification. Pausanias also mentions the Temple of Hera, as it housed two important statues, one of Hera Teleia and one of Rhea, both by Praxiteles. Another celebrated temple in the city, that of Athena Areia, was renowned for the works of the painter Polygnotus which decorated its walls, but this structure has yet to be identified with any architectural remains. Southwest of the acropolis, inside the walls, an ancient necropolis has been excavated, while another group of graves in the northeast corner of the acropolis has been identified as the burial place for the fallen in the Battle of Plataea; stone foundation remains found at that site have been attributed by the excavator to the altar of Zeus Eleutherios.

3. Plataea in the Early Christian and Byzantine period

Uninterrupted habitation in the site of the ancient city is attested for the Byzantine Period. In Late Antiquity, the fortified settlement had become confined to the area of the acropolis, where sections of 3rd cent. AD defensive walls can be seen. Inscriptions dated to this period record, among else, the presence of Jews in the city, and also testify to the spread of Christianity. The agricultural and demographic recovery of Boeotia from the 4th cent. onwards, however, appears to have affected Plataea as well. The city became the seat of a diocese in the 4th and 5th cent. AD, and was represented, among else, in the Fourth Ecumenical Synod at Chalcedon (451 AD). One of the inscriptions found in the area mentions one bishop of Plataea named Dionysius (IG VII. 1683).

Out of the finds from Plataea outstanding are the two parts of Diocletian’s edict ‘On Prices’ (it set fixed prices for various goods, 301 AD). The above can be construed as indications that Plataea had become a peripheral administrative centre in the Early Christian period. Procopius mentioned repairs carried out on the city walls during the reign of Justinian I (527-565). The remains of ten churches, dating from the Early Christian period to the period of Frankish rule had been excavated in the area by the late 19th century in the first excavations carried out in the site, while east of the settlement Early Christian burials and small building were unearthed.

4. Rural settlements in the period of Frankish rule and the early Ottoman era

Following its capture by the knights of the Fourth Crusade, Boeotia became part of the Duchy of Athens and Thebes (1205), while the countryside was divided into feudal estates. Individual towers dating to this period, like the Frankish tower at Melissochori (along the road from Melissochori to Kapareli), probably served as residences for feudal lords and afforded them control over their estates; these should not be interpreted as parts of a broad defensive system in the duchy. Choosing a site suitable for the construction of a tower could involve the relocation of the dependant settlement. In the last phase of Frankish rule, in the second half of the 14th and the first half of the 15th century, an epidemic of the plague and the incessant rivalries and clashes between the Catalans, later the Florentine rulers, the weakened Byzantines and the forces of the Ottomans (who eventually dominated the region) caused the countryside to become severely depopulated. During the same period, large groups of Albanians organized in clans begun entering and settling in the lands of the duchy. The authorities of the duchy invited settlers and encouraged them to set up home in their areas, seeking to bolster the numbers of the agrarian population and the strength of their forces vis-à-vis the expansionary policies of the Ottomans.

In the area of Plataea these population movements are attested in the Ottoman tax registers, which record the villages of Louta (Loutoufi), Kokla (New Plataea), Kapareli, Paparougia (Leuctra) and Baltsa (Melissochori), as well as the ethnicity of their inhabitants. Apart from Melissochori, all these villages, which in the independent Greek state jointly formed the deme of Plataea, with Kapareli as its seat, were already recorded in an earlier Ottoman register of 1466. In the register of 1506, Kokla (Kokla-Mazi) was recorded as a village, not a katun and constituted the most populous Arvanitan settlement in the area. The correlation of the area as the domain of ancient Plataea was first proposed in the 17th century, when the traveller George Wheler identified the archaeological site close to the village Kokla as the ancient city. In the Greek War of Independence, rebels from Kokla fighting under Ioannes Filis participated, among else, in the temporary liberation of Thebes in April 1821 and the capture of Anephorites, whence they launched forays against the Turks of Thebes after the city was recaptured by the Ottoman forces.

5. Leuctra and the archaeological site of Eutreses

In 371 BC, the Thebans under general Epaminondas, who employed new tactics in terms of the formation of the hoplite phalanx and the use of cavalry, emerged victorious against the Spartans at Leuctra, in a battle that signalled the dawn of Theban hegemony. The pedestal on which the battle trophy was placed was discovered and restored in situ by the archaeologist Anastasios Orlandos. A small Byzantine temple stands outside Leuctra, Ayios Petros and Pavlos (St Peter & Paul), which, notwithstanding modifications carried out during its restoration in 1886, preserves at places decorative brickwork and morphological features that suggest the original building was constructed in 12th century.

In the Byzantine period in the area of Leuctra, the site Livadostra became the main Boeotian harbour in the Corinthian Gulf and the port of medieval Thisbe / Kastorion, a city whose economy was flourishing as it was a hub connected with the silk producing workshops of Boeotia. Livadostra was a small harbour, but provided a more direct shipping route to southern Italy. The medieval tower that protected the settlement has been dated to the period of Frankish rule, while parts of fortifications reaching as far back as the 4th cent. BC have also come to light. Livadostra has been identified as ancient Creusis, the port of Thisbe in ancient times; in the 6th cent. AD Stephanus Byzantinus included it in his list of settlements as a polis (=city).

Approximately 2 km northeast of Leuctra is the archaeological site of Eutreses. Excavations there have shown the site was inhabited as early as the Neolithic period, while in the Early Helladic period it was flourishing and was significantly expanded. In Mycenaean times it was fortified, but later it was abandoned until the 6th cent. BC, when it was settled by the inhabitants of Thespiae; although habitation was scarce, Classical Eutreses was famed for its sanctuary and the oracle of Apollo Eutresites. The site remained inhabited in the Byzantine period, as suggested by the finds unearthed there (parts of Byzantine walls, a medieval tower as well as the foundations of a Byzantine church).