1.32.1 The Attic mountains are Pentelikos, where there are quarries, Parnes, where there is hunting of wild boars and of bears, and Hymettos, which grows the most suitable pasture for bees, except that of the Alazones.^* For these people have actually bees ranging free, tamely following the other creatures when they go to pasture. These bees are not kept shut up in hives, and they work in any part of the land they happen to visit. They produce a solid mass from which you cannot separate either wax or honey. Such then is its nature.

1.32.2 The Athenians have also statues [agalmata] of gods on their mountains. On Pentelikos is a statue [agalma] of Athena, on Hymettos one of Zeus Hymettios. There are altars [bōmoi] both of Zeus Ombrios [‘he of the rain’] and of Apollo Proopsios [’foreseer’]. On Parnes is a bronze Zeus Parnethios, and an altar to Zeus Semaleus. There is on Parnes another altar [bōmos], and on it they make-sacrifice [thuein], calling Zeus sometimes Ombrios, sometimes Apēmios. Ankhesmos is a mountain of no great size, with a statue [agalma] of Zeus Ankhesmios.

1.32.3 Before turning to a description of the islands, I follow up further on matters having to do with the demes [dēmoi] [of Attica]. There is a deme [dēmos] called Marathon, equally distant from the city [polis] of the Athenians and from Karystos in Euboea. It was at this point in Attica that the barbarians landed, were defeated [krateîsthai] in battle, and lost some of their ships as they were trying to pull away [from the shore].^* On the plain [pedíon] is the tomb [taphos] of the Athenians, and upon it are slabs [stēlai] with [inscriptions of] the names of those killed, organized by way of their subdivisions [phūlai]; and there is another tomb for the men of Plataea from Boeotia and also for the slaves. I say-this-because [gar] slaves too fought there, and it was the first time that this happened.

1.32.4 There is also an individual monument [mnēma] for one man, Miltiades son of Kimon, although his end [teleutē] happened later, after he had failed to capture Paros and for this reason had been put on trial by the Athenians. At this place [= Marathon] every night you can hear horses neighing and you can sense that men are fighting in combat. No one who has deliberately set out to experience this vision [théā] in-full-view [en-argēs] has ever really had any success, but still, if something is experienced in some alternative way by someone who has no ear for such things, this is no cause for anger [orgē] on the part of the spirits [daimones]. The people of Marathon worship [sebesthai] both those who died in the fighting, calling them heroes [hērōes], and also [the hero] Marathon, from whom the deme [dēmos] derives its name, and then Hēraklēs, saying that they were the first among the Greeks [Hellēnes] to establish-the-custom-of-thinking [nomizein] him to be a god [theos].

1.32.5 They [= the people of Marathon] tell about something that happened at the battle [makhē] [of Marathon]. It was the presence of a man who had the looks [eidos] of a farmer [agr-oikos]—and implements [skeuē] to match. Wielding a plough [arotron] he slaughtered with it many of the barbarians, and then, after having done what-was-done [ergon] he disappeared [= became a-phanēs]. When the Athenians consulted the god [Apollo], he did not make-an-oracular-pronouncement [khrēsai] with regard to him [= the man with the plough] but simply commanded them to honor [tīmân] Ekhetlaios (= he of the plough-handle) as a hero [hērōs]. A trophy-column [tropaion] of white marble has been made [to mark the turning-point or tropaion of the battle of Marathon]. The Athenians say that they buried the Persians, since it is a universally [pantōs] holy-thing [hosion] for the corpse [nekros] of a human to be covered by the earth, but I could not find any tomb [taphos] for them. There was neither a tumulus [khōma] nor any other marker [sēmeion] to be seen. They must have carried them [= the dead Persians], just as they found them, to some ditch and tossed them in.

1.32.6 In Marathon is a spring [pēgē] called Makaria, and what they say about it is as follows. When Hēraklēs left Tiryns, fleeing from Eurystheus, he went to live with his friend Keyx, who was king of Trakhis. When Hēraklēs departed the life of humans [anthrōpoi], Eurystheus demanded his children. But the king of Trakhis sent them to Athens, saying that he was weak while Theseus was hardly powerless to protect them. The arrival of the children as suppliants [hiketai] caused for the first time war between Peloponnesians and Athenians, since Theseus refused to give them up [= the children of Hēraklēs] at the demand of Eurystheus. And they say that an oracle [khrēsmos] was given the Athenians that one of the children of Hēraklēs must die a voluntary death, or else victory [nīkē] could not be theirs. Then Makaria, daughter of Deianeira and Hēraklēs, slaughtered [apo-sphazein] herself and gave to the Athenians the upper hand [kratos] in the war and to the spring [pēgē] her own name.

1.32.7 There is at Marathon a lake [limnē] which for the most part is marshy [hel-ōdēs]. Into this lake fell the barbarians [= the Persians] as they were turning and running [after the battle], since they did not know their way around the roads, and it is said that much of the slaughter [phonos] that followed was because of this. Above the lake are the stone stables of the horses of Artaphernes, and there are marks [sēmeia] of his tent [skēnē] on the rocks. Out of the lake flows a river, providing near the lake itself water suitable for cattle, but near its mouth it becomes saline and full of sea fish. A little beyond the plain is the Hill of Pan and a Cave of Pan, which is worthy of viewing [théā]. The entrance to it is narrow, but farther in are chambers and baths and the so-called Pan’s herd of goats, which are rocks that look very much like goats.