Marathon

In 490 BC an Athenian army met a Persian landing force on this coastal plain and won, against the odds and without Spartan help. The Athenian dead were buried where they fell under a mound, the Soros, which still stands about ten metres high in a field of pines. The story that a runner carried news of the victory to Athens and died of it is a later embellishment, but the modern race takes its distance and its name from here. It is quiet farmland now, with a mound in it.