Plataiai

Plataia or Platiaiai (Ancient Greek: Πλάταια or Πλαταιαί, Latin Plataea or Plataeae) was an ancient city and polis (city state), located in southeastern Boeotia in central Greece, south of Thebes. It is famous as the the location of the Battle of Plataea in 479 BC, in which an alliance of Greek city-states defeated the Persians.

Plataia was inhabited from the Neolithic period to the late Middle Ages, including the Greek Dark Age. The city was traditionally a rival and enemy of Thebes and thus an ally of Athens. The city supported the Greek military efforts against Persia at Marathon (490 BC) and Artemision (480 BC), and was destroyed by the army of the Persian king Xerxes in 480 BC. The next year the Greek allied forces defeated the Persian troops left in Central Greece a little to the northeast of the deserted site of the city. Plataia was rebuilt and resumed its traditional anti-Theban and pro-Athenian stance. At the beginning of the Peloponnesian War in 431 BC, the Thebans made a failed attempt to take over Plataia. With Spartan assistance they besieged the city in 429 BC; Plataia was starved into surrender in 427 BC, and the next year the Thebans razed it to the ground. After the King's Peace in 386 BC, the Spartans refounded Plataia, which now became a Spartan ally against an increasingly hostile Thebes. Just before the battle of Leuktra in 371 BC, the Thebans succeeded in capturing and destroying Plataia again. After Philip of Macedon's victory over the Thebans at Chaironeia in 338 BC, Plataia was refounded again, with its inhabitants recalled from exile. When Alexander the Great destroyed Thebes in 335 BC, the Plataians encouraged his decision. Plataia was now refortified to serve as a pro-Macedonian stronghold; the process was still incomplete in 331 BC, when Alexander sent funds for it from the East. The city remained a Macedonian ally after Alexander's death, although the refoundation of Thebes in 315 BC diminished Plataia's regional importance. Nevertheless, Plataia continued to host the Eleutheria (celebrating the Greek victory over the Persians at Plataia in 479 BC) and the Lesser and Greater Daidala; all of these festivals were of regional, pan-Boeotian import. In the early Middle Ages, the city was home to at least ten churches and the seat of a bishop. The settlement still existed in the 15th century, when the Ottoman sultan Mehmet II made a visit. Subsequently the ancient and medieval site was abandoned, and the Albanian village of Kokla or Kokkla was established just to its west, on the site of modern Plataies.

Ancient Plataia occupied a plateau between several streams in southern Boeotia. The raised ground in the northwestern portion of the plateau served as the town's acropolis. The lower ground to the south (partly occupied by a modern cemetery) was part of the classical city, but was left out of the defensive perimeter in the Hellenistic Period, when the diateichisma wall was built to its north to shorten the wall circuit and ease the work of the defenders.

For additional information on the archaeology of ancient and medieval Plataiai, see here:
www.ascsa.edu.gr/pdf/uploads/hesperia/3182023.pdf

 archaeological siteAncient Greece