Marathon B

Standing in the fenced and locked compound of the Greek Archaeological Service at Agios Panteleimon, a single course of finely worked marble blocks is all that remains of a medieval tower. It sits some 600 metres from the Soros, the great burial mound of the Marathon dead, and is catalogued as tower No.19 in Langdon's list of Attica's mortared towers. The neat rectangle, measuring 6.63 by 4.57 metres, once prompted theories of an ancient origin, but excavation proved otherwise. The marble blocks, their outer faces vertically stippled, were quarried from older buildings and reset here in mortar during medieval times. Rubble and mortar pad the varying thicknesses of the reused stone to give all four walls a uniform width of 84 centimetres. The date is uncertain: it may be Frankish, or Byzantine, much like the nearby Trophy of Marathon tower, two and a half kilometres away, which shares its construction and ruined state.