Pheidippides

Athenian courier

• Born: Probably c. 515 b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Athens, Greece
• Died: Perhaps 490 b.c.e.
• Place of death: Perhaps Athens, Greece

Pheidippides delivered a message, on foot and over a long distance, concerning the Battle of Marathon fought between Persia and Athens in 490 b.c.e. Despite problems with the ancient tradition, Pheidippides’ feat of running is still popularly associated with the announcement of the Athenian victory and also with the introduction of the so-called marathon race in modern times.

Early Life

No information is available about the early life of Pheidippides (fi-DIHP-ih-deez) prior to his famous run, which occurred in 490 b.c.e., either shortly before or shortly after the Battle of Marathon, a pivotal conflict of the Greco-Persian Wars. At Marathon, located in Athenian territory to the northeast of the city of Athens, a smaller army of Athenians courageously faced and dramatically defeated a larger Persian army, and Pheidippides’ run has become famous as a symbol of that victory.

The Battle of Marathon showed the effectiveness of the Greek infantry, and it greatly enhanced the self-confidence of the Greeks, especially the Athenians, in their military and cultural prowess. Along with the “birth of democracy” at Athens a few years earlier, the victory at Marathon marked the transition from the early Archaic Age of Greece (c. 750-500 b.c.e.), a time of independent development for the Greek city-states. After Marathon, acting more in concert than ever before, Athens, Sparta, and other Greek states went on to repel an even greater Persian attack on Greece in 480 to 479 b.c.e., and in the classical age of Greek glory in the fifth century b.c.e., the Greeks made phenomenal achievements in the areas of politics, literature, philosophy, and the arts.

The best source on Pheidippides is Herodotus, the “father of history,” the fifth century b.c.e. author of Historiai Herodotou (c. 424 b.c.e.; The History, 1709), a work on the Persian Wars. Herodotus says that Pheidippides was an Athenian and a trained hemerodromos, a “day-runner,” which means that he delivered messages by running long distances on foot. Clearly, he was well trained and in excellent physical shape, and he had run long distances before. Probably, but not necessarily, he was a fairly young man in 490.

Life’s Work

Pheidippides’ achievement was a physically impressive feat of long-distance running performed in the context of one of history’s most famous battles, but details of his actions were confused and at least semilegendary, even in antiquity. Even his name is a matter of debate. Some ancient manuscripts of Herodotus and some other ancient sources name the runner Philippides, a more common name in ancient Athens. Nevertheless, the name Pheidippides is still popularly associated with the “messenger of Marathon,” the heroic soldier who supposedly fought at the Battle of Marathon and then ran approximately twenty-five miles to Athens, delivered the message, “Rejoice! We have won,” and dropped dead.

Recent studies have reexamined the ancient sources and shown that this inspirational event perhaps never happened at all and certainly did not happen as is traditionally assumed. According to Herodotus, in 490 b.c.e. a Persian force landed in Athenian territory and occupied the plain of Marathon. One of the Athenian generals, Miltiades the Younger, convinced the Athenians to send out a force of heavily armed infantry soldiers (called hoplites) to meet the Persians. Before the army departed for Marathon, the Athenian generals decided to send a herald to appeal to Sparta, the leading military power in Greece, for help against Persia.

The Athenian Pheidippides, a courier trained at delivering messages over long distances by running, carried the appeal from Athens to Sparta, a distance of about 140 miles (225 kilometers). Later, on his return, Pheidippides told the Athenians that while he was running over Mount Parthenion in Arcadia (a region of Greece along the route to Sparta) the god Pan (a Greek god, part human and part goat in form, associated with flocks, shepherds, and fertility) called him by name. Pan, Pheidippides claimed, told him to ask the Athenians why they had failed to worship the god with a state cult when he had been friendly to them, he had helped them in the past, and he was willing to do so in the future. Herodotus adds that, after the return to peace and prosperity, the Athenians built a shrine to Pan and established annual sacrifices and a torch race to honor the god.

According to Herodotus, on the second day after leaving Athens, the messenger arrived in Sparta. He addressed the Spartan leaders and begged them to help save Athens from slavery at the hands of the Persians. The Spartans said they wanted to help but that they were busy with an important festival, the Carnea, in honor of Apollo, and so their religion obliged them to stay at Sparta until the arrival of the full moon later in the month. As Herodotus recounts, a force of about ten thousand Greeks (mostly Athenians, with a few soldiers from Plataea, a state allied with Athens) were heavily outnumbered, perhaps by two to one, by the Persian forces. Nevertheless, the Greeks charged and defeated the Persians in an infantry battle that, Herodotus claims, cost the lives of 6,400 Persians but only 192 Athenians.

Herodotus notes that immediately after the battle, the Athenian troops hurried back to the city to defend it against a possible Persian attack by sea. Troops from Sparta did arrive at Marathon but only after the battle was over. Significantly, Herodotus makes no mention of a post-battle run by Pheidippides. Herodotus loved stories of heroic feats and wonders, so his silence about a “Marathon run” seriously undermines the credibility of the later traditions about the runner.

The popular version of the story comes from later authors. Writing around 100 c.e., Plutarch, a Greek biographer of famous ancient leaders, stated that Herakleides of Pontus, a Greek philosopher of the fourth century b.c.e., had said that the messenger who brought the news from Marathon was one Thersippus of Erchia. This suggests that some story of a messenger announcing the victory at Marathon at Athens was known in the mid-fourth century b.c.e. but that the messenger’s name was not Pheidippides. Furthermore, Plutarch says most (probably later) sources say that the messenger was a certain Eukles and that he ran directly from the battle, still in full armor, to Athens, said “Rejoice! We have won,” and then died. Elsewhere, Plutarch tells a suspiciously similar story about a man named Euchidas: that in 479 b.c.e., after another Greek land victory against Persia, he ran from Plataea to Delphi and back to Plataea, covering the distance of about 125 miles (202 kilometers) in one day, carrying a torch burning with sacred fire, that he greeted his fellow citizens, handed them the torch, and died.

The latest ancient source on the tradition is Lucian, a prolific literary figure who, around 170 c.e., wrote that the name of the messenger from Marathon was Philippides and that, with his dying words, he announced the victory to the Athenian officials. Lucian thus is the only ancient author to combine all the now-popular details—a messenger named Philippides or Pheidippides who ran from Marathon to Athens and announced the victory with his last words before dying. In sum, because the best source, Herodotus, omits the story, and the “Marathon run” turns up only in later, less reliable sources, the popular story perhaps was a romantic invention of the type that commonly grow up around famous battles and famous figures.

Adding to the tradition and the confusion, Robert Browning’s 1879 poem “Pheidippides” mixed ancient accounts with poetic creativity to produce a full-blown modern version of the tale. Browning’s poem has Pheidippides run to Sparta to request help, then run back to fight at Marathon, and then run to Athens, arriving, with his heart bursting with joy, to announce the victory and die. This amounts to a truly impressive but much less credible historical accomplishment. Nevertheless, Browning’s expanded, romantic version of the story inspired (or was used to suggest an ancient precedent for) the introduction of the modern marathon race in the Olympic Games held in Athens in 1896.

Despite modern misperceptions, Pheidippides’ run to Sparta should not be associated with any sporting contest but rather with the abilities of ancient messengers. There simply was no marathon or ultra-long-distance running in ancient Greek athletics. At ancient Greek athletic meets, the longest footrace, the dolichos, was run over a distance of at most 3 miles (5 kilometers). However, other ancient examples, modern studies, and the feats of modern long-distance athletes have shown that even such a lengthy run as 140 miles (225 kilometers) could have been accomplished by a well-trained runner in two days. Moreover, the story that the runner saw Pan provides a convincing detail, for long-distance runners sometimes do experience altered states of consciousness as part of the so-called runner’s high.

Significance

Ironically, Pheidippides has not been immortalized for his historically credible and physically very impressive (though ultimately militarily futile) run from Athens to Sparta but rather for a much shorter and historically much less credible run from Marathon to Athens, a run associated with a great military victory and his own dramatic death. Indeed, there probably was a fifth century b.c.e. Pheidippides (or Philippides) who carried a message from Athens to Sparta, quite conceivably covering the distance in two days. However, the popular version of the story, that a soldier running miles from the victory at Marathon to Athens and then dropping dead as he delivered the news, is surely a product of a tradition begun by later, less reliable ancient authors, amplified by Browning’s 1879 poem and memorialized by the introduction of the marathon race at the Olympics in 1896.

Although the story remains a cherished part of the folklore of ancient Greece and of modern sport, the “Marathon run” should not be associated with Pheidippides; moreover, marathon running as a sport rather than as a form of messenger service is of historically recent origin. Not actually derived from ancient sport but rather invented for the Athens Olympic Games of 1896, the marathon race has nevertheless become both a symbol of the Olympic Games and an internationally popular athletic event.

Bibliography

Burn, A. R. Persia and the Greeks: The Defence of the West, 546-478 b.c.. 2d ed. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1984. A readable, traditional, but still useful military history of the conflicts between Greece and Persia.

Frost, Frank J. “The Dubious Origins of the Marathon.” American Journal of Ancient History 4 (1979): 159-163. An important article challenging the value of sources after Herodotus on the runner, whom Frost argues was actually named “Philippides.”

Herodotus. The Histories. Translated by Robin Waterfield. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. A convenient translation of the classic ancient history of the background to and course of the Persian Wars.

Lazenby, J. F. The Defence of Greece, 490-479 b.c.. Warminster, England: Aris & Phillips, 1993. An excellent account of the failure of the Persian invasions of Greece.

Lee, Hugh M. “Modern Ultra-Long-Distance Running and Philippides’ Run from Athens to Sparta.” Ancient World 9 (1984): 107-113. Offers modern comparisons to show that a run from Athens to Sparta in two days was possible for a trained runner.

Matthews, V. J. “The Hemerodromoi: Ultra-Long-Distance Running in Antiquity.” Classical World 68 (1974): 161-167. The author, a classicist and marathon runner, thoroughly examines several ancient accounts of long-distance running.

Sweet, Waldo E. Sport and Recreation in Ancient Greece. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. A sourcebook of ancient texts on sport. Includes sources on Pheidippides in a chapter on running in ancient Greece.