Truth-Loving Persians May Not Dwell Upon It...

After our trip to Rhamnous we went to Marathon, the site of the battle of Marathon, which was the battle in 490 when the Athenians and some of their allies beat the forces of Darius, the king of Persia. This is, of course, a hugely important battle in the history of western civilization. This is the view out over the plain of Marathon. The story of the battle goes something like this. In the early to mid 490s BC, the Greek cities of Ionia revolted against the Persians, and their not-too-successful rebellion was supported by the Athenians. In revenge, Darius, the then-emperor of Persia, sent a force out against the Athenians. This plain is where the battle between the Persian forces and the Athenians (and their allies the Plateians- the Athenians asked for the help of the Spartans, but since the Spartans were celebrating a religious festival, they didn't come) occurred. I'm not going to bore you with a description of the battle- if you are interested, Herodotus would be the author to consult.
The hill that we climbed to get a good view of the plain. It was cloudy that day- we were concerned that it was going to rain, but in the end it never did anything more than threaten. We did get a nice view of the plain, and we could see where most of the action took place- though we did not see Pan, Theseus, or any of the other gods and heroes reported to have fought alongside the Athenians. Tragic. And shocking.

This was an incredibly important battle for the Athenians- Aeschylus, the great Athenian tragedian, didn't want his grave to record his many great plays- he wanted it to be written that he had fought at the battle of Marathon.
The plain again! You have probably heard of Marathon before because of the Marathon, the 26-ish mile long race designed to commemorate the run of Pheidippides from Marathon to Athens. You'll be interested to hear that the source written nearest to the events in question, Herodotus, does not in fact say anything about Pheidippides running from Marathon to Athens- he ran from Athens to Sparta, meaning that he ran about 150 miles in two days. (Sometime during this run, he supposedly ran into the god Pan, who went on to help the Athenians in the battle. I'm thinking he was hallucinating.) A run from Marathon to Athens is mentioned in much later sources, but whether it actually happened is debatable. Browning wrote a poem (called "Pheidippides") about this run, which I think has probably helped to perpetuate this story about a guy making a heroic run from Marathon to Athens and then kicking it.
This is the mound where the Athenian dead were buried! According to Herodotus, 192 Athenians were killed, including Callimachus, the polemarch of Athens. At Marathon there is a nice museum with a lot of finds from the site of Marathon, but we weren't allowed to take pictures inside so I can't show any to you.
This is another view of the burial mound. You may have heard of this mound from Byron's poem Don Juan, canto 3- there's that part where he's sitting on the grave of the Persians and can't deem himself a slave? He's actually referring to this, the Athenians apparently just sort of dumped the bodies of the Persians in a trench. (you can find the whole poem at http://readytogoebooks.com/LB-greece.htm)