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Precinct of Demeter

Sanctuary of Eleusinian Demeter on the battlefield of Plataea, Boeotia, 479 BCE

A sanctuary of Eleusinian Demeter stood near the river Moloeis below Mount Cithaeron. In 479 the Spartans and Tegeans fought Mardonius's Persian infantry beside it, and the battle that ended the invasion of Greece was decided there. Herodotus noted that no Persian was found dead inside the sacred ground.

In the game: The precinct stands on the Plataea map as a historic structure; the player does not build it. The game's note on the fighting and the missing Persian dead follows Herodotus.

A shrine by the Moloeis

Ancient account

Herodotus says that when the Greeks shifted position by night, the Spartans were the last to move because one officer, Amompharetus, refused to retreat. They halted near the river Moloeis, at a place called Argiopion, where there was a sanctuary of Eleusinian Demeter. There they waited for his company to rejoin them.

Herodotus 9.57

The fight beside the sanctuary

Ancient account

Mardonius led his Persians across the Asopus at a run to attack the Spartans and Tegeans, and the fighting took place by the precinct. Herodotus says the Persians matched the Greeks in courage and strength but lacked armour and skill, rushing forward singly or in small groups. Mardonius fell fighting with his picked guard of a thousand, and the Persians then fled.

Herodotus 9.59-9.65

No Persian dead on holy ground

Ancient account

Herodotus records it as a wonder that, although the battle was fought by Demeter's grove, no Persian was seen to enter the precinct or die inside it; most fell around the shrine on unconsecrated ground. He suggests, with caution about judging divine matters, that the goddess refused them because they had burned her sanctuary at Eleusis. He adds that the battle at Mycale was also fought beside a precinct of Eleusinian Demeter.

Herodotus 9.65, 9.101

The oracle of Demeter's plain

Later legend

Plutarch, writing some six centuries later, tells of a Delphic oracle bidding the Athenians fight in the plain of Eleusinian Demeter and Kore. The Plataean general Arimnestus dreamed that Zeus the Saviour told him the places of the oracle lay near Plataea. The oldest Plataeans then showed him an ancient temple of Eleusinian Demeter and Kore near Hysiae under Cithaeron.

Plutarch, Aristides 11

The site has not been located

Disputed

The precinct has not been securely located, and the Moloeis and Argiopion cannot be fixed with certainty. Topographers have placed it at different points on the ridges between the Asopus and Cithaeron, some near Hysiae and others further west. Because the course of the battle depends on these positions, reconstructions of Plataea still differ.

W. K. Pritchett, Studies in Ancient Greek Topography I, 1965; J. F. Lazenby, The Defence of Greece 490-479 BC, 1993