Marathon tumuli

One is a burial mound (Greek τύμβος, tymbos, tomb), or "Soros" that houses the ashes of 192 Athenians who fell during the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC.

Athens and its ally Plataea, some 11,000 hoplites in total, attacked a Persian expeditionary force of some 25,000 infantry and 1,000 cavalry, with 100,000 armed sailors acting as reserves.

Herodotus 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.

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.

This concept is based on the similarities between the structure and interment method used with the tumuli, and the description of the burial practices used by and for their mythical heroes in the Iliad.