THE TERRIBLE STORY OF THE UNKNOWN PRISONERS.

 THE UNKNOWN PRISONERS



In 2016, archaeologists found over 80 shackled skeletons in a mass grave dug in a corner of a necropolis which was unearthed during the construction of a library and national opera house between Athens and the port of Piraeus.

 The burial site dates back to between the 8th and 5th century BCE, and, unlike the downtown Kerameikos cemetery where the majority of the occupants were either nobles or rich, it contains the regular people, like children resting in clay pots, soldiers still wearing parts of their armor, adults buried in stone coffins or burned and interred in an urn. Most showed the signs of a hard and short life, except for the eighty shackled men who were all young and fit.  

Who were they? Since most had their wrist tied in iron shackles, and they were all buried at the same time, the assumption is that they were the victims of a mass execution, though their orderly burial and health status suggests they were more than slaves or common criminals, possibly citizens belonging to the middle-class.
 
Who they were, why they were executed, and why they appear to have been buried with a measure of respect remains a mystery, but the leading theory is that they were the supporters of an Athenian noble and Olympic champion called Cylon, who staged an attempted coup in 632BCE with the help of his father-in-law, the tyrant of Megara, another polis 50Km to the west of Athens. 
The coup failed and Cylon hid with his men in a temple of the Acropolis, from where he eventually escaped, but his men were were not so lucky. Lured out of the temple with promises of leniency, they were all killed. 

The event fits more or less with the date of the mass burial, but is just an hypothesis. DNA testing may confirm it, or reveal some other possibility. For now, all we know is that something horrible happened in Athens sometimes in the mid-7th century BCE. 

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