Pheidippides

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For the comic character Pheidippides, see the Clouds.

Pheidippides

Statue of Pheidippides alongside the Marathon Road.

Born

circa 530 BC
Athens

Died

circa 490 BC
Athens

Pheidippides (Greek: , more correctly given as Philippides,

by Herodotus and Plutarch, since Pheidippides, 'sparing a horse', is a jocular name for a
character in a play by Aristophanes[1]) is the central figure in a story that was the inspiration for a
modern sporting event, the marathon race. Pheidippides is said to have run
from Marathon to Athens to deliver news of a military victory against the Persians at the Battle of
Marathon.
Contents
[hide]

1Story

2Modern times
o

2.1Spartathlon

2.2In popular culture

3References

4Sources

5Further reading

6External links

Story[edit]

Painting of Philippides as he gave word of the Greek victory over Persia at the Battle of Marathon to the
people of Athens.
Luc-Olivier Merson, 1869

The first recorded account showing a courier running from Marathon to Athens to announce
victory is from within Lucian's prose on the first use of the word "joy" as a greeting in A Slip of the
Tongue in Greeting.[2]
... Philippides, the one who acted as courier, is said to have used it first in our sense when he
brought the news of victory from Marathon and addressed the magistrates in session when they
were anxious how the battle had ended ; "Joy to you, we've won" he said, and there and then he
died, breathing his last breath with the words "Joy to you". Lucian translated by K.Kilburn.[3]
... The modern use of the word dates back to Philippides the dispatch-runner. Bringing the news
of the victory at Marathon, he found the archons seated, in suspense regarding the issue of the
battle. 'Joy, we win!' he said, and died upon his message, breathing his last in the word Joy ...
Lucian Pro lapsu inter salutandum (translated by F.G. and H.W. Fowler, 1905)[4]
The traditional story relates that Philippides (530 BC490 BC), an
Athenian herald or hemerodrome[2] (translated as "day-runner" (Kyle 2007),[5] "courier" (Larcher
1806),[6][7] "professional-running courier" (Sears 2003)[2] or "day-long runner" (Miller 2006)[8]), was
sent to Sparta to request help when the Persians landed at Marathon, Greece. He ran about
240 km (150 mi) in two days. He then ran the 40 km (25 mi) from the battlefield near Marathon
to Athens to announce the Greek victory over Persia in the Battle of Marathon (490 BC) with the
word (nikomen[9] "We win!"), as stated by Lucian chairete, nikomen ("hail, we are the
winners")[10] and then collapsed and died.
Most accounts incorrectly attribute this story to the historian Herodotus, who wrote the history of
the Persian Wars in his Histories (composed about 440 BC). However, Magill and Moose (2003)
suggest that the story is likely a "romantic invention." They point out that Lucian is the only
classical source to which all the elements existed of the story known in modern culture as the
"Marathon story of Philippides": a messenger running from the fields of Marathon to announce
victory, then dying on completion of his mission.[11]
Robert Browning gave a version of the traditional story in his 1879 poem Pheidippides.
So, when Persia was dust, all cried, "To Acropolis!
Run, Pheidippides, one race more! the meed is thy due!
Athens is saved, thank Pan, go shout!" He flung down his shield
Ran like fire once more: and the space 'twixt the fennel-field
And Athens was stubble again, a field which a fire runs through,
Till in he broke: "Rejoice, we conquer!" Like wine through clay,
Joy in his blood bursting his heart, - the bliss!

("Fennel-field" is a reference to the Greek word for fennel, marathon, the origin of the name of
the battlefield.)
It was this poem which inspired Baron Pierre de Coubertin and other founders of the
modern Olympic Games to invent a running race of 42 km called the marathon.
In any case, no such story appears in Herodotus. The relevant passage of Herodotus (Histories,
Book VI, 105...106 [12]) is:
Before they left the city, the Athenian generals sent off a message to Sparta. The messenger was
an Athenian named Pheidippides, a professional long-distance runner. According to the account
he gave the Athenians on his return, Philippides met the god Pan on Mount Parthenium, above
Tegea. Pan, he said, called him by name and told him to ask the Athenians why they paid him no
attention, in spite of his friendliness towards them and the fact that he had often been useful to
them in the past, and would be so again in the future. The Athenians believed Philippides's story,
and when their affairs were once more in a prosperous state, they built a shrine to Pan under the
Acropolis, and from the time his message was received they held an annual ceremony, with a
torch-race and sacrifices, to court his protection.
On the occasion of which I speak - when Philippides, that is, was sent on his mission by the
Athenian commanders and said that he saw Pan - he reached Sparta the day after he left Athens
and delivered his message to the Spartan government. "Men of Sparta" (the message ran), "the
Athenians ask you to help them, and not to stand by while the most ancient city of Greece is
crushed and subdued by a foreign invader; for even now Eretria has been enslaved, and Greece
is the weaker by the loss of one fine city." The Spartans, though moved by the appeal, and willing
to send help to Athens, were unable to send it promptly because they did not wish to break their
law. It was the ninth day of the month, and they said they could not take the field until the moon
was full. So they waited for the full moon, and meanwhile Hippias, the son of Pisistratus, guided
the Persians to Marathon.
The significance of this story is to be understood in the light of the legend that the
god Pan returned the favor by fighting with the Athenian troops and against the Persians at
Marathon. This was important because Pan, in addition to his other powers, had the capacity to
instill the most extreme sort of fear, an irrational, blind fear that paralysed the mind and
suspended all sense of judgment panic.
Herodotus, writing about 30 to 40 years after the events he describes, did, according to Miller
(2006) in fact base his version of the battle on eyewitness accounts, [8] so it seems altogether
likely that Philippides was an actual historical figure, although the same source claims the
classical author did not ever in fact mention a Marathon-Athens runner in any of his writings.
Whether the story is true or not, it has no connection with the Battle of Marathon itself, and
Herodotus's silence on the subject of a herald running from Marathon to Athens suggests
strongly that no such event occurred.
The first known written account of a run from Marathon to Athens occurs in the works of the
Greek writer Plutarch (46120), in his essay On the Glory of Athens. Plutarch attributes the run
to a herald called either Thersippus or Eukles. Lucian, a century later, credits one "Philippides." It
seems likely that in the 500 years between Herodotus's time and Plutarch's, the story of
Pheidippides had become muddled with that of the Battle of Marathon (particularly the story of
the Athenian forces making the march from Marathon to Athens in order to intercept the Persian
ships headed there), and some fanciful writer had invented the story of the run from Marathon to
Athens.

Modern times[edit]

Monument in Sparta with names of Spartathlon winners

Spartathlon[edit]
Main article: Spartathlon
Based on this account, British RAF Wing Commander John Foden and four other RAF officers
travelled to Greece in 1982 on an official expedition to test whether it was possible to cover the
nearly 250 kilometres in a day and a half. Three runners were successful in completing the
distance: John Foden (37:37), John Scholtens (34:30) and John McCarthy (39:00).
Since 1983, it has been an annual footrace from Athens to Sparta, known as the Spartathlon,
celebrating Pheidippides's at least semi-historical run across 246 km of Greek countryside.
Course records

In popular culture[edit]

Male: 20:25:00, Yiannis Kouros (Greece), 1984

Female: 25:07:12, Katalin Nagy (USA), 2015

Theatrical release poster

Steve Reeves played Pheidippides in the 1959 film The Giant of Marathon. In 1991, Yiannis
Kouros starred as Pheidippides in the movie The Story of the Marathon: A Hero's Journey, which
chronicles the history of marathon running.

References[edit]
1.

Jump up^ Nick Sekunda. Marathon 490 Bc:The First Persian

Invasion of Greece. Osprey Publishing, 18 Oct
2002. ISBN 1841760005.

2.

^ Jump up to:a b c Edward Seldon Sears. Running Through the

Ages. McFarland, 2001. Retrieved 2012-04-08.

3.

Jump up^ John A. Lucas. A History of the Marathon race 490

B.C. to 1975 (PDF). Pennsylvania State University & Los Angeles
1984 foundation. Retrieved 2012-04-08. External link in |
publisher= (help)

4.

Jump up^ Sacred-texts.com Retrieved 2013-12-14

5.

Jump up^ Donald G. Kyle (Professor and Chair of History at the

University of Texas). Sport And Spectacle in the Ancient World.
John Wiley & Sons, 2007. ISBN 0631229701. Retrieved 2012-0408.

6.

Jump up^ Herodotus -Herodotus, Volume 3 Leigh and S.

Southeby, 1806 Retrieved 2012-04-08

7.

Jump up^ Larcher, Pierre Henri; Cooley, William

Desborough. Larcher's Notes on Herodotus, historical and critical
comments on the History of Herodotus, with a chronological table;
Translated from the French (1844). London, Whittaker.
Retrieved 2012-04-08.

8.

^ Jump up to:a b Stephen G. Miller (professor of classical

archaeology at the University of California). Ancient Greek
Athletics. Yale University Press, 1 Aug 2006. ISBN 0300115296.
Retrieved 2012-04-08.

9.

Jump up^ University news team (7 September 2011). "News from

the University Press releases "Bristol team to mark 2,500th
anniversary of the first marathon"". University of Bristol.

10. Jump up^ Herodotus, Robin Waterfield, Carolyn Dewald. The

Histories. Oxford University Press, 15 May 2008,. Retrieved 201204-08.
11. Jump up^ Frank Northen Magill; Christina J. Moose. Dictionary of
World Biography: The Ancient World. Taylor & Francis, 23 Jan
2003. ISBN 1579580408. Retrieved 2012-04-08.
12. Jump up^ [1]

Sources[edit]

Aubrey de Slincourt and A. R. Burn. Herodotus - The Histories.

Penguin Classics, 1954, 1972.

Further reading[edit]

Frost, Frank J. (1979). "The Dubious Origins of the

'Marathon'". American Journal of Ancient History. 4 (2): 15962.

Hans W. Giessen, "Mythos Marathon. Von Herodot ber Bral

bis zur Gegenwart". Landau: Verlag Empirische Pdagogik (=
Landauer Schriften zur Kommunikations- und
Kulturwissenschaft. Band 17) (2010). ISBN 978-3-941320-46-8.

External links[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has
media related
to Pheidippides.
Wikisource has original
text related to this article:
Pheidippides

WorldCat Identities

Spartathlon website

1896 - Pheidippides... run again! Olympic Opera by the

composer Luca Belcastro

The Story of the Marathon

VIAF: 46172473

Categories:

Ancient Athenians

People of the Greco-Persian Wars

Marathon running

5th-century BC Greek people

Ancient Greek heroes

Battle of Marathon

Pan (god)

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