Cynegirus

Athenian hoplite son of Euphorion, elder brother of the tragedian Aeschylus. Herodotus names him in the catalogue of the fallen at Marathon: pursuing the Persians as they re-embarked in chaos, he caught hold of the stern-cable of one of the ships to keep it from launching, and had his hand cut off by a Persian axe. He died of the wound. The story became one of the stock exemplars of Athenian martial heroism, repeatedly cited in fourth-century oratory as the paradigm of the citizen who gives his body for the city.

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