Dr Estelle Strazdins | University of Queensland

Remembering Marathon

The Plain of Marathon is a storied landscape impossible to traverse without imagining the ghosts of Miltiades and Callimachus and without searching for physical signs of Athens’ famous victory. This was certainly the case for early European travellers to Greece as they tried to make sense of the battlefield, armed with their classical educations and copies of Pausanias and Herodotus. This lecture will explore their responses to features of the plain, especially the Soros (the Mound). I will focus on their untangling of archaeology, legend, expectation, and imagination in their efforts to identify the Tomb of the Athenians or, as the Greek Minister for Education called it in 1836, ‘the most ancient monument of Greek glory’. This examination will also take in the nearby sanctuary of Nemesis at Rhamnous and the connections made by early travellers between this goddess, Pausanias’ description of her cult statue, and the flint arrowheads they identified in the soil of the Soros.

Time | Location

This event will be on Zoom | 16 June 2021

6:30-8:00pm

Registration

Registration is essential. Please click here to register via Eventbrite

Featured image: JOLY, Alexis Victor. Vues de la Grèce moderne, Lithographiées par A.J., accompagnées d’un texte descriptif, 1824