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Plataea (; , Plátaia) was an ancient Greek city-state situated in Boeotia near the frontier with Attica at the foot of Mt. Cithaeron, between the mountain and the river Asopus, which divided its territory from that of Thebes.Strabo, Geography, ix. p.411. This page is an edited and updated version of an article in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography of 1870, p. 637. Its inhabitants were known as the Plataeans (Πλαταιαί; Plataiaí, ).
It was the location of the Battle of Plataea in 479 BC, in which an alliance of Greek defeated the Persian Empire.
Plataea was destroyed and rebuilt several times during the Classical Greece of ancient Greece. The modern Greek town of Plataies is adjacent to its ruins.
In 520 BC Plataea, unwilling to submit to the supremacy of Thebes, and unable to resist this powerful neighbour with its own resources, sought the protection of Sparta. Sparta, however, demurred, saying:
We live too far away, and our help would be cold comfort to you. You could be enslaved many times over before any of us heard about it. We advise you to put yourselves under the protection of the Athenians, since they are your neighbours and not bad men at giving help.Herod, vi. 108Herodotus, the source of this statement, went on to say that the Spartans had an ulterior motive in this: that they wished to cause trouble between Athens and Thebes. In the end, Plataea did form a close alliance with Athens, to which its people remained faithful during the whole of its subsequent history.Thuc. iii. 68.4
In the following year (479 BC), their territory was the scene of the Battle of Plataea, which delivered Greece from the Persian invaders. In this engagement, a combined Greek force met those of the Persian general Mardonius on the plain next to the Asopus River. As this victory had been gained on the soil of Plataea, its citizens received special honour and rewards from the confederated Greeks. Not only was the large sum of 80 talents granted to them, which they employed in erecting a temple to Athena, but they were charged with the duty of tendering religious honours every year to the tombs of the warriors who had fallen in the battle, and of celebrating every four years the festival of the Eleutheria in commemoration of the deliverance of the Greeks from the Persian yoke. The festival was sacred to Zeus Eleutherius, to whom a temple was erected at Plataea. In return for these services the assembled Greeks swore to guarantee the independence and inviolability of the city and its territory.Thuc. ii. 71; Plutarch, Life of Aristeides, 19-21; Strabo, ix. p. 412; Pausanias, Description of Greece, ix.2.4.
In the third year of the war (429 BC) the Peloponnesian army under the command of Spartan king Archidamus laid siege to Plataea, claiming that it had violated the protections guaranteed it after the Persian War by continuing its alliance with Athens. Before deciding whether to declare the city neutral or maintain their alliance with Athens, the Plataeans secured a truce, during which they sent their old men, women, and children to Athens together with the envoys who were to see what Athens had to say. In the end, they determined to continue the alliance, which set the stage for the assault that came next. The remaining garrison of the city consisted of only 400 citizens and 80 Athenians, and 110 women who were there to manage household affairs. Yet this small force defied the whole army of the Peloponnesians, which, after many fruitless attempts to take the city, gave up the assault and converted the siege into a blockade. They raised a circumvallation round the city consisting of two parallel walls, 16 feet apart, with a ditch on either side. Then, leaving a small force to guard the city, the invading army went home.Thuc. ii.2-71-78.
In the second year of the blockade (428), 212 of the besieged succeeded in scaling the walls of circumvallation during the night and safely made it to Athens.Thuc., iii.20-24. In the course of the following summer (427), those remaining in Plataea were obliged, through failure of provisions, to surrender to the Peloponnesians. After a "trial" by the Spartans, in which their arguments against the unwarranted assault on the city were shunted aside, they were put to death and all private buildings were razed to the ground by the Thebans. In time, the latter used the remnants to erected an inn and a chapel for the local precinct of Hera. The land was allocated to those Plataeans who had supported Thebes in the lead-up to the attack.Thuc. iii.52-68.
At the close of the Peloponnesian War, Athens was compelled to evacuate Scione, and the Plataeans again found a hospitable welcome at Athens.Plutarch, Life of Lysander, 14.
But the Plataeans did not long retain possession of their city. With Thebes ever a threat to their independence, Sparta kept a garrison there to protect it, and at the Boeotian cities of Thespiae and Orchomenus as well. In the 370s, Athens and Thebes went to war against Sparta, and the Lacedaemonians used Thespiae and Plataea as staging areas for a series of incursions into Boeotia to ravage the Theban countryside. After several years of this, the Thebans, sometimes with Athenian help, began to get the upper hand in these encounters. In 375 BC Sparta was too busy with other campaigns to send forces to the area and Thebes took the opportunity to compel these cities back into the Boeotian Federation. Though not under assault, the Plataeans had lost their independence once more.
Over the next couple of years, the Plataeans increasingly resented Thebes' heavy hand. At some point – the year is reported variously as 373, 372, and 371 BC by ancient sources – they reached out to Athens in an attempt to restore the long-standing alliance between the two cities. This, of course, incensed the Thebans and they attacked the Plataea before Athens could respond.
Unlike the attack in 427 BC, this time the Thebans expelled the Plataeans rather than killing them - sending them once again to Athens, after which they razed the city. They next did the same to neighboring Thespiae. (The wrongs done to the Plataeans by Thebes were set forth in a speech of Isocrates, entitled Plataicus, which was probably delivered at this time by a Plataean speaker before the Assembly at Athens. At any rate, it was later published and preserved among Isocrates works.) As a result of these actions, Athens backed out of its alliance with Thebes and sought peace with Sparta.Xenophon, The Histories, vi.3.1; Diodorus, xv.46.4; Pausanias, ix.1.4-8, Isocrates, Plataicus.
In 371 BC, Sparta lost a major battle to Thebes at Leuktra, in Boeotia.Xenophon, vi.4.3-15. For the next two decades Thebes reigned supreme in Greece, until the rise of Macedon and the campaign of Philip II to extend its hegemony throughout the region. During this time, the Plataeans remained in exile at Athens.
In 335 BC, Thebes revolted against Alexander, who had succeeded his father the previous year. In response, Alexander destroyed the city, sending the Theban survivors into slavery.Diodorus, viii.8-16; Arrian, Anabasis of Alexander, vii-ix. With their would-be overlords out of the picture, the Plataeans were finally free.
The temple of Athena Areia was built, according to Pausanias,Pausanias, ix.4.1. out of a share of the spoils of Marathon; but according to PlutarchPlutarch, Life of Aristeides, §20 it was with the 80 talents out of the spoils of Plataea, as mentioned above. The temple was adorned with pictures by Polygnotus and Onatas, and with a statue of the goddess by the Athenian sculptor Phidias. Of the temple of Demeter Eleusinia we have no details, but it was probably erected in consequence of the battle having been fought near a temple of Demeter Eleusinia at Argiopius.Herodotus, ix.57. The temple of Zeus EleutheriusStrabo, ix.2.31. seems to have been reduced in the time of Pausanias to an altar and a statue. It was situated outside the city.Pausanias, ix.2.5-7.
Plataea is featured in the 2nd-century AD Latin novel Metamorphoses (often called The Golden Ass) by Apuleius, in which it is depicted as hosting gladiatorial combat and an array of wild beasts.Apuleius, The Golden Ass. Book 4.
Plataea's walls were restored by Justinian I in the 6th century AD.Procopius, De Aedificiis ( On Buildings). iv.2.
The modern village of Plataies is adjacent to the ancient ruins. Foundation stones for several of its buildings are still extant. More information can be found at https://eternalgreece.com/ancient-plataea/
Perhaps the fullest explanation of their status came from Demosthenes in Against Neaera. During this oration, he had the clerk read out a previously enacted degree regarding the Plataeans that had been passed during their exile in 429 BC:
On motion of Hippocrates it is decreed that the Plataeans shall be Athenians from this day, and shall have full rights as citizens, and that they shall share in all the privileges in which the Athenians share, both civil and religious, save any priesthood or religious office which belongs to a particular family, and that they shall not be eligible to the office of the nine archons but their descendants shall be. And the Plataeans shall be distributed among the demes and the tribes; and after they have been so distributed, it shall no longer be lawful for any Plataean to become an Athenian, unless he wins the gift from the people of Athens.Demosthenes, Against Neaera, lix.104.If this is a true representation of the decree (and its wording has been challenged in modern timesCanevaro, Mirko. "The Decree Awarding Citizenship to the Plataeans (Dem. 59.104)." Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies
. Canevaro suggests that the paraphrase by Demosthenes of the decree which follows its reading is a more accurate rendering of its contents.), it would seem that the status did not apply to all Plataeans forever, but only to those individuals who were specifically honored and their children. Based on the several references to separate grants of citizenship, it is probable that these honors were bestowed multiple times over the years to succeeding generations of Plataean exiles.
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