3-028-660 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketch from the road between Marathon and Athens, 1870. View of the '...country between Athens and the Plain of Marathon, where the unfortunate party of English tourists were kidnapped, on Monday, the 11th April, by the gang of robbers under the lead of the brothers Arvanitakis, who have long infested that mountainous district. Marathon, the scene of the ever-memorable battle, in the year 490 B.C.,...is situated on the western shore of the Sunium promontory, which juts out southward from the mainland of Attica...The width of this peninsula does not exceed twenty or thirty miles from the Gulf of Egina or Salamis, on the west side, to the Strait of Egripo, separating the island of Negropont or Euboea from the mainland, on the east side. Stretching farther up the coast of this strait, or narrow channel, to the north of Attica, lies the province of Thebes, into which the brigands carried four of their prisoners, after releasing the ladies and sending Lord Muncaster to Athens to fetch the ransom. The terrible end of this affair, on Friday, the 22nd, by the murder of the English gentlemen near Oropos, a village on the coast, where the brigands found their retreat cut off by the Greek troops, was reported in our last week's Number'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.