Pheidippides

Pheidippides, legendary Greek hēmerodromos, or courier, who is popularly believed to have run 40 km (about 25 miles) from the battlefield at Marathon to Athens in 490 bce, to report that the Athenians, in a single afternoon, had repulsed the first Persian invasion of Greece. His feat is popularly believed to have inspired the modern long-distance race known as the marathon. In another account, Pheidippides ran the much longer distance from Athens to Sparta and back before the battle.

Robert Browning, in his 1879 poem “Pheidippides,” combined the two accounts and reshaped them, heightening the story’s drama. In that retelling, the courier first runs from Athens to Sparta, and on the return trip he encounters the god Pan, who promises to help Athens against the Persians. After reporting back to Athens, Pheidippides joins the Athenian army to fight at Marathon, situated on the plain of northeastern Attica. Following the battle the courier is urged to run to Athens with the news of the Athenian victory. Upon delivering the message, Pheidippides drops dead of exhaustion, “joy in his blood bursting his heart.” In honor of his legendary accomplishment, a marathon race was included in the modern Olympic Games, beginning with the first, held in Athens in 1896. In 1924 the marathon distance was standardized at 42,195 meters (26 miles 385 yards).

Historians think it likely that Pheidippides was a real person but that the legends about him conflated two separate Athenian messengers who made two different runs. In the History (book VI, chapters 105–106) by the Greek historian Herodotus, Pheidippides made his run before the Battle of Marathon, going from Athens to Sparta to ask for military assistance from the Spartans against the numerically superior Persian forces. The courier ran there and back, covering about 300 km (150 miles). His route to Sparta would have taken him through Corinth, Nemea, and Arcadia and avoided kingdoms or city-states not allied with Athens. According to Herodotus, while crossing Mount Parthenion in Arcadia Pheidippides encountered Pan, who wanted to know why the Athenians disregarded him. Herodotus reported that the Athenians later built a shrine to the god and established accompanying traditions of worship and celebration.

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Pheidippides made the journey to Sparta in 36 hours but was unsuccessful in enlisting prompt military aid, as he found the Spartans in the middle of a nine-day religious festival, during which warfare was prohibited. He was forced to return to Athens posthaste and completed his entire journey in three days. There is no record in Herodotus of Pheidippides making a subsequent run from the battlefield at Marathon to Athens to report the Athenians’ victory.