What happened
In 490 BC the Athenians and Plataeans defeated a Persian army at Marathon. More than six hundred years later, the Greek traveler Pausanias, describing Attica in his “Description of Greece” (c. AD 160), recorded a remarkable piece of news: every night on the plain of Marathon one can hear horses neighing and men fighting. He added a warning – those who go there on purpose to see the spectacle come to no good, but the ghosts are not angry with those who happen to be there by chance. Pausanias also described the mound in which the 192 fallen Athenians were buried and told of a mysterious warrior with a plowshare, Echetlus, who was said to have appeared in the battle, slain Persians and then vanished. The Soros mound still rises above the plain.
Witnesses
Recorded by Pausanias (c. AD 160), citing local belief; he names no specific witnesses.
Explanations and hypotheses
Pausanias was a careful observer, but here he reports a local belief rather than his own experience. Historians of religion see it as an expression of hero cult – the dead of Marathon were honored as heroes, and their graves were considered places of special power. The motif of a battle that continues after the combatants' deaths appears in many cultures and recurs in early modern reports from Edgehill and Souther Fell. The Marathon account is its oldest surviving example.
Legend A story handed down through generations – it can be neither confirmed nor disproved.
Sources
- Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.32.4, tłum. W. H. S. Jones (Perseus / Scaife CTS)
- Gregory Nagy, Classical Inquiries – Eight glimpses of Marathon in Scroll 1 of Pausanias (Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard)
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