Sunni O"Brien Sandbox

Death Group Content

My list of topics:

  • The Marathon Tumulus (1)
  • The Posedonia Heroon (2)
  • The Death Masks of Mycenae (3)

Marathon Tumulus Bibliography (Not final by any stretch of the imagination)

Articles

Special To the New York Times. “Greek Warriors' Bones Found At Site of Battle of Marathon.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 3 May 1970, www.nytimes.com/1970/05/03/archives/greek-warriors-bones-found-at-site-of-battle-of-marathon-bones-of.html.

Vanderpool, Eugene. “A Monument to the Battle of Marathon.” Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, vol. 35, no. 2, 1966, pp. 93–106. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/147299.

Whitley, James. “The Monuments That Stood before Marathon: Tomb Cult and Hero Cult in Archaic Attica.” American Journal of Archaeology, vol. 98, no. 2, 1994, pp. 213–230. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/506636.

[note from Prof. Paga -- the Whitley article is a great source!]

Sakoulas, Thomas. “Marathon Archaeological Site.” Marathon Archaeological Site, State University of New York, at Oneonta, ancient-greece.org/images/ancient-sites/marathon/marathon.html.

Books

Whitley, James. The Archaeology of Ancient Greece. Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Herodotus. Herodotus: the Histories. Translated by Robin Waterfield, Oxford University Press, 1998.





The Marathon Tumulus (An Early Draft)

(Introduction Paragraph)

The Marathon Tumulus was a burial mound (Greek Τύμβος, tymbos, tomb) that housed the 192 Athenians who fell during the Battle of Marathon in 490 BCE. The burial mound is dominates the plain of Marathon, where the battle took place, along with the tumulus of the Plataeans, and a column that the Athenians erected to commemorate their victory over Darius' Persian expedition. These features are an early example of the commemoration of war dead, and of the monumentalization of battlefields, both of which have become common after the First World War.


-The Battle of Marathon

The Battle of Marathon took place at Marathon on September 12th, or possibly August 12th, 490 BCE at the plain of Marathon. Athens and its ally Plataea attacked a Persian expeditionary force of some 25,000 infantry and 1,000 cavalry, with 100,000 armed sailors acting as reserves with 11,000 hoplites. The Athenian forces attacked down a hillside onto the coastal plain, and using the momentum of their tightly packed, heavily armored formation routed the less disciplined Persian flanks, which were unused to fighting heavily armored troops. The subsequent route left the Persian center exposed and amounted to high causalities for the Persians as their command structure fell into disarray and as soldiers scrambled onto their ships. Herodatus claims that the Greeks counted 6,400 dead Persians on the field, but could make no account for those who fled into the swamps off to the north of the battlefield. Herodatus states that the Athenians lost 192 men in the battle and the the Plataeans lost 11.


-The Monuments

The Athenian Tumulus is the largest of the monuments on the battlefield today standing around 40 feet tall. It overshadows the Plataean Tumulus which stands 10 feet tall and the Victory Column which has since collapsed and been replaced with a modern replica both in height and in general mass. Both the Athenian tumulus and the Plateau tumulus have been excavated, with multiple bodies been found inhumed in the Plataean Tumulus and a large layer of ash and charred bone having been found in the Athenian Tumulus. Both tumuli are fairly standard with hemispherical shapes and with the dead interred within the hole left by the excavation of the dirt that would be piled on top of them.


-Biblography

Special To the New York Times. “Greek Warriors' Bones Found At Site of Battle of Marathon.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 3 May 1970, www.nytimes.com/1970/05/03/archives/greek-warriors-bones-found-at-site-of-battle-of-marathon-bones-of.html.

Vanderpool, Eugene. “A Monument to the Battle of Marathon.” Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, vol. 35, no. 2, 1966, pp. 93–106. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/147299.

Whitley, James. “The Monuments That Stood before Marathon: Tomb Cult and Hero Cult in Archaic Attica.” American Journal of Archaeology, vol. 98, no. 2, 1994, pp. 213–230. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/506636.

Sakoulas, Thomas. “Marathon Archaeological Site.” Marathon Archaeological Site, State University of New York, at Oneonta, ancient-greece.org/images/ancient-sites/marathon/marathon.html.

Whitley, James. The Archaeology of Ancient Greece. Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Herodotus. Herodotus: the Histories. Translated by Robin Waterfield, Oxford University Press, 1998.

(This article is by no means finished, however there is not an awful lot out there on the tumulus)