Editing Battle of Marathon (section)

=== Marathon run ===
{{Main|Marathon#History}}
[[File:Phidippides.jpg|thumb|[[Luc-Olivier Merson]]'s painting depicting the runner announcing the victory at the Battle of Marathon to the people of [[Athens]].]]
According to Herodotus, an Athenian runner named Pheidippides was sent to run from Athens to Sparta to ask for assistance before the battle. He ran a distance of over 225 kilometers (140 miles), arriving in Sparta the day after he left.<ref>Herodotus [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0126&layout=&loc=6.105 VI, 105–06]</ref> Then, following the battle, the Athenian army marched the 40 kilometers (25 miles) or so back to Athens at a very high pace (considering the quantity of armour, and the fatigue after the battle), in order to head off the Persian force sailing around Cape Sounion. They arrived back in the late afternoon, in time to see the Persian ships turn away from Athens, thus completing the Athenian victory.<ref name="h198">Holland, p. 198.</ref>

Later, in popular imagination, these two events were conflated, leading to a legendary but inaccurate version of events. This myth has Pheidippides running from Marathon to Athens after the battle, to announce the Greek victory with the word "nenikēkamen!" ([[Ancient Greek|Attic]]: {{lang|grc|νενικήκαμεν}}; we've won!), whereupon he promptly died of exhaustion. This story first appears in Plutarch's ''On the Glory of Athens'' in the 1st century AD, who quotes from [[Heraclides Ponticus|Heracleides of Pontus]]'s lost work, giving the runner's name as either Thersipus of Erchius or Eucles.<ref>Plutarch, ''Moralia'', 347C</ref> [[Lucian of Samosata]] (2nd century AD) gives the same story but names the runner Philippides (not Pheidippides).<ref>Lucian, III</ref> In some medieval codices of Herodotus, the name of the runner between Athens and Sparta before the battle is given as Philippides, and this name is also preferred in a few modern editions.<ref>Lazenby, p. 52.</ref>

When the idea of a modern [[Olympic Games|Olympics]] became a reality at the end of the 19th century, the initiators and organizers were looking for a great popularizing event, recalling the ancient glory of Greece.<ref name = AIMS/> The idea of organizing a "marathon race" came from [[Michel Bréal]], who wanted the event to feature in the [[1896 Summer Olympics|first modern Olympic Games]] in 1896 in Athens. This idea was heavily supported by [[Pierre de Coubertin]], the founder of the modern Olympics, as well as the Greeks.<ref name = "AIMS">{{cite web|url=http://aimsworldrunning.org/marathon_history.htm|title=Marathon History|access-date=2008-10-15|author=AIMS|archive-date=2014-02-03|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140203003751/http://aimsworldrunning.org/marathon_history.htm|url-status=dead}}</ref> This would echo the legendary version of events, with the competitors running from Marathon to Athens. So popular was this event that it quickly caught on, becoming a fixture at the Olympic games, with major cities staging their own annual events.<ref name = AIMS/> The distance eventually became fixed at {{convert|42.195|km|miyd|abbr=off}}, though for the first years it was variable, being around {{convert|25|mi|km|order=flip}}—the approximate distance from Marathon to Athens.<ref name = "AIMS"/>
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== Later depictions ==
The Battle of Marathon was briefly depicted in the opening scenes of the movie ''[[300: Rise of an Empire]]'' (2014).
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