The Phantom Battle of Marathon
Six centuries after the famous battle, people said that every night on the plain of Marathon you could hear horses neighing and men fighting.
What was reported
In 490 BC the Athenians defeated a Persian army on the coastal plain of Marathon, a victory remembered ever since. Around 650 years later, the Greek travel writer Pausanias visited the battlefield and recorded what the locals told him: that every night on the plain you could hear the neighing of horses and the clash of men in battle.
He added that those who went there on purpose to hear it came to no good, but anyone who happened to hear it by chance was not harmed.
Explanations offered
It's an early example of a 'replay' legend, in which the sounds of a great event are said to repeat at the place where it happened. Pausanias recorded it as a local belief. Wind across the marshy plain and the power of a famous place on the imagination are the usual explanations.
- When
- Reported in the 2nd century AD
- Where
- Plain of Marathon, Attica, Greece
- Witnesses
- Travellers and local people, recorded by Pausanias
- Status
- Legend
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.
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