Pheidippides

Pheidippides
Statue of Pheidippides alongside the Marathon Road
Born	c. 530 BC Athens
Died	c. 490 BC Athens

Pheidippides (Ancient Greek: Φειδιππίδης, Ancient Greek pronunciation: [pʰeː.dip.pí.dɛːs], Modern Greek: [fi.ðiˈpi.ðis] lit. 'Son of Pheídippos') or Philippides (Φιλιππίδης) is the central figure in the story that inspired the marathon race. Pheidippides is said to have run 40 kilometres (25 mi) from Marathon to Athens to deliver news of the victory of the Battle of Marathon, and, according to Herodotus, to have run from Athens to Sparta. This latter feat also inspired two ultramarathon races, the 246-kilometre (153 mi) Spartathlon and 490-kilometre (300 mi) Authentic Pheidippides Run.

The name Philippides is reported by Pausanias, Plutarch, and Lucian, writers who had read this name in their versions of Herodotus, while in most of Herodotus's manuscripts the form appears Pheidippides.^[1]

Other than Herodotus's manuscripts, the form Pheidippides is only attested in Aristophanes's The Clouds (423 BC). Many historians argue that Aristophanes willfully distorted the real name so as not to use the name of the hero of Marathon in his play, or as a play on words meaning "save horses". However, given that the name Pheidippo is attested in the Iliad, the existence of a Pheidippides cannot be excluded, but according to many this form remains an error of the copyists of the manuscripts.^[2]

The traditional story relates that Pheidippides (530–490 BC), an Athenian runner, or hemerodrome^[3] (translated as 'day-runner',^[4] 'courier',^[5][6] 'professional-running courier'^[3] or 'day-long runner'^[7]), was sent to Sparta to request help when the Persians landed at Marathon, Greece. He ran about 240 km (150 mi) in two days, and then ran back. He then ran the 40 km (25 mi) to the battlefield near Marathon and back to Athens to announce the Greek victory over Persia in the Battle of Marathon (490 BC) with the word νικῶμεν (nikomen^[8] 'We win!'), as stated by Lucian chairete, nikomen ('hail, we are the winners')^[9] and then collapsed and died.

The Greek historian Herodotus was the first person to write about a Athenian runner named Pheidippides participating in the First Persian War. His account is as follows:^[10]

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, Pheidippides 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 Pheidippides'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 Pheidippides, 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.

— Herodotus^[10]

According to Miller (2006), Herodotus, only 30–40 years removed from the events in question, based his account on eyewitnesses,^[7] so it seems altogether likely that Pheidippides was an actual historical figure.^[11] However, Miller also asserts that Herodotus did not ever mention a Marathon-to-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 evidently dramatic incident of a herald running from Marathon to Athens suggests that no such event occurred.^{[original research?]}

The first known written account of a run from Marathon to Athens occurs in the works of the Greek writer Plutarch (46–120 AD), 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 (in particular with 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.^{[original research?]}

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 (2nd century AD).^[3][12][13]

Most accounts incorrectly attribute Lucian's story to 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 with all the elements of the story known in modern culture as the "Marathon story of Pheidippides": a messenger running from the fields of Marathon to announce victory, then dying on completion of his mission.^[14]

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!

This poem inspired Baron Pierre de Coubertin and other founders of the modern Olympic Games to invent a running race of approximately 40 km (25 mi) called the marathon. In 1921, the length of marathons became standardized at 42.195 km (26.219 mi).^{[citation needed]}

Based on Herodotus's 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 (155 miles) in a day and a half (36 hours). Three runners were successful in completing the distance: John Scholtens (34^h30^m), John Foden (37^h37^m), and John McCarthy (39^h00^m). Since 1983 it has been an annual footrace from Athens to Sparta, known as the Spartathlon, celebrating Pheidippides's run across 246 km (153 mi) of Greek countryside.

Another run inspired by Herodotus's account, the Authentic Pheidippides Run, makes a round trip from Athens to Sparta and back.^[15]

• Herodotus (1972) [1954]. Herodotus: The Histories. Translated by de Sélincourt, Aubrey; Burn, A.R. Penguin Classic.

• Frost, Frank J. (2017) [1979]. "The Dubious Origins of the 'Marathon'". American Journal of Ancient History. 4 (2): 159–62. doi:10.31826/9781463237424-006. ISBN 978-1-4632-0669-7.
• Giessen, Hans W. (2010). Mythos Marathon: Von Herodot über Bréal bis zur Gegenwart (in German). Landau: Verlag Empirische Pädagogik (= Landauer Schriften zur Kommunikations- und Kulturwissenschaft. Band 17). ISBN 978-3-941320-46-8.

• "Spartathlon". spartathlon.gr (home page). Hellas (Greece).
• Belcastro, Luca. "Pheidippides ... run again!". Olympic Opera. Italy. 1896.
• Αυθεντικός Φειδιππίδειος Δρόμος Authentic Pheidippides Run (in English and Greek)