Battle of Marathon
Similarly, the story that a shield was used as a heliograph at the Battle of Marathon is a modern myth, originating in the 1800s. Herodotus never mentioned any flash. What Herodotus did write was that someone was accused of having arranged to "hold up a shield as a signal". Suspicion grew in the 1900s that the flash theory was implausible.&lt;ref name="http://www.jstor.org/stable/625005"&gt;&lt;/ref&gt; The conclusion after testing the theory was "Nobody flashed a shield at the Battle of Marathon".