Pheidippides

Assembled from 19 blocks · 1 evidence · 15 related

1. Story
2. The Athenian long-distance messenger from whom the marathon takes its story rather than its name. What the earliest source actually says is narrow: Herodotus, Histories VI.105-106, records that before the battle the Athenians sent a trained runner, Pheidippides or Philippides, to Sparta to ask for help, a journey of roughly 250 km, and that he met the god Pan on Mount Parthenion on the way. Herodotus says nothing at all about a run from Marathon to Athens. That run appears centuries later — Plutarch, writing about five hundred years afterwards, names other messengers, and Lucian names Philippides — and the modern form of the story, with the collapse and the cry of victory, comes from Robert Browning's 1879 poem. The historical figure and the legend are separate objects, and the sport is descended from the legend.
3. Knowledge
4. Pheidippides
5. The first modern Olympic marathon, Marathon to Athens
6. Connections
7. The first modern Olympic marathon, Marathon to Athens
8. Battle of Marathon
9. The first modern Olympic marathon, Marathon to Athens
10. Histories, Book VI, chapters 105–106
11. Boston Marathon
12. Pheidippides
13. Spyridon Louis
14. The 1908 Olympic marathon fixes 26 miles 385 yards
15. Marathon and the Tumulus of the Athenians
16. Spyridon Louis
17. Pheidippides
18. Evidence
19. Herodotus records that before the Battle of Marathon the Athenians sent a trained runner, named Pheidippides or Philippides, to Sparta to request help, and that he encountered Pan on Mount Parthenion; Herodotus records no run from Marathon to Athens. V55 verification basis: the chapter attribution and the absence of the Marathon-to-Athens run were read in encyclopaedic summary (Britannica, National Geographic); the Greek text was not consulted in this session.