Pheidippides

Pheidippides ( ancient Greek: Φειδιππίδης ), also called Thersippos, Eukles and Phillippides, after the tradition of Herodotus, an Athenian messenger, with a before the Battle of Marathon - ran for assistance to Sparta - ultimately futile. In a much later tradition of Plutarch and Lucian of Samosata, the name after the message has been transmitted to the legendary messenger, BC ran on 12 September 490 after the Battle of Marathon to Athens and died of exhaustion on the Areopagus, had transmitted the victory over the Persians. This fabulous run over 42 km is the model for the modern marathon.

Herodotus Tradition (5th century BC)

The end of August of the year 490 BC ended the armed forces of the Achaemenid Empire under Darius I on the Greek mainland at Marathon with the intention to subjugate the city-states of Greece. Therefore, the Athenian ruler Miltiades sent a messenger named Pheidippides runners with a request for help to Sparta. - Such a runner was called in ancient Greece Hemerodromos ( ἡμεροδρόμος ).

The messenger said to have traveled the distance of 245 km in less than two days. However, the Spartans shared with him that they should not interrupt their ongoing hard Karneia ( as an oracle ), and consequently the Athenians earliest could afford military assistance in six days. Thus the Athenians were put in the Battle of Marathon to turn to.

Plutarch and Lucian (1st and 2nd century AD)

Only Plutarch tells 500 years after these events, relying on a lost work of Heraclides Ponticus of a messenger who had gone after the battle of Marathon to Athens, and calls this Thersippos or Eukles. Lucian took up this story a century later on and returns a name for the runner " Phillippides ", which contributed to the fusion of these legendary figure with the historically authentic Pheidippides.

The texts of these two relatively late authors are the only traditions of the marathon runners. However, they are less evidence for the historicity of the marathon runner, but rather lead to doubt his historicity. Therefore, the question of the historicity of the marathon runner with somewhat different justifications will be answered mostly negative today.

Quote

" The old Marathon Runner is a completely tragic hero: he was not only not Pheidippides, he went not only not from Marathon to Athens, where he has been not only not dropped dead, it has not even given him. He is an invention born much later. " (Dieter Eckart, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on 24 October 1987)