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The story is way more insane, the Greek messenger, Pheidippides, did two runs, a round trip from Athens to Sparta and back, like 480km through mountains in two days, then (during the battle of Marathon) his final run from Marathon to Athens (40km), the one he is famous for, saying "Nike! " meaning Greek “we won!” before collapsing and dying.
480km through mountains in two days
Lol, my man was running 10 kilometers per hour for 48 hours straight?
Like with anything in Ancient Greek history, the numbers they quote are typically meaningless. The amount of exaggeration or straight up lying they did back then would make kim jong il blush.
That’s not so bad. I can do that easy after eating 12 steaks for breakfast with my cyclops buddy.
My brother in Christ yes the poets exaggerate but we can map the distance from cities with lasers in space so we know how far he ran. The question is how fast.
Right, but I’m not disputing the distance between cities. That’s not the subjective information in this claim. I am disputing if he actually ran a full round trip, just from one to the other, or even just part of that. We could also ask how long it took, or if he even ran it at all.
When ancient sources claim unbelievable things, it is fairly reasonable to just not believe them.
All right, but it isn’t exactly unbelievable that someone ran for 2 days then keeled over dead, from exhaustion.
I think how it’s depicted is pretty suspicious. If a modern politician like Trump claimed something like that would you believe him?
"Pheidippides was a tremendous runner, really the greatest messenger in the history of messengers. When the Persians (very bad people) were attacking, the generals went to him and said, “We need a runner.” He didn’t complain. He ran, he fought, he ran again.
He ran all the way to Athens to deliver the good news. He sprinted the whole way, arrived, and shouted, “We won!” (truly a beautiful message). And because he gave it his absolute all, he was totally drained and he tragically collapsed and died. Very sad, but a perfect ending for a hero. Nobody ran better than Pheidippides."
Is that very believable to you? Or does it ring of nationalistic propaganda?
Normally in propaganda the hero doesn’t fall over dead from human limitations.
It’s far more believable than: Philip the demigod was so tuff he could run for two days straight and not break a sweat.
Heroic sacrifice is a very common trope in propaganda…Also, I wouldn’t claim him to be the overall hero of the battle of marathon. That would prob be Miltiades, Themistocles, or Aristides.
The popularization of the tale of someone running matarathon wasn’t popularized until Plutarch wrote about it nearly 500 years later and he named the runner “Eucles, although also possible Thersippus of Eroeada”, then around 100 years later Lucian of Samosata gave the same story but names the runner Philippides (not Pheidippides).
Philip the demigod was so tuff he could run for two days straight and not break a sweat.
And there is a difference between mythology and history.
It’s a story that went through millennia, I think a bit of inaccuracy is valid. I mean, I only need a few beers to embellish my stories.
i mean shit it only took… three generations? for my family’s old mule story to change from me almost being a medical experiment to me almost being a billionaire potato princess.
I mean ok but what here do you think has been embellished? we know the distance we know human endurance and average health for the time period. As far as ancient stories go this one is pretty cut and dry factual IMHO. No magic no divine fate just a man running until burnout
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. Magill and Moose (2003) suggest that the story of the Marathon–Athens run and Pheidippides’s death 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
Maybe he had a horse?
I’m sure they’re lying but running an average of 10 kilometers per hour over 48 hours isn’t insane
Usain Bolt’s top speed is 44 kilometers per hour. Maybe the dude wasn’t that fast or running top speed the whole time but his job was running a lot I’m sure he was fast as fuck.
So maybe it averaged out and it was only exaggerated a little bit?
10km per hour over 48 hours is absolutely insane, and the comparison with Bolt’s 100m world record doesn’t make any sense.
The ultramarathon world record holders today might do it : the closest existing event is the Spartathlon, a one-way Athens-Sparta race, for which the records are around 20h. Which leaves 8h of sleep before you have to do the world record run a second time…
Another decent comparison is the 48h ultramarathon. Matthieu Bonne broke the world record at 485km in 48h in 2025, the previous one being 475km.
But Matthieu Bonne is running on a flat rubber track. And both examples have modern shoes, nutrition and a support team following them.
So we are supposing our guy is world record material, even though he is selected from a population of 30k male Athenian citizen at the time. We are supposing he is running the world record twice, back to back, in sandals and without anyone to help him on the way. And/or we are supposing he is running as fast as a guy doing it on flat rubber.
It’s not quite impossible (or only slightly exaggerated) but it sure as hell is absolutely insane.
He also fought in a battle immediately after the run. Then ran some more. Then died.
You don’t think someone could run themselves to death? Humans are capable of miraculous things.
Imho the exaggeration is he fought in the battle instead of just ran
Yeah no doubt. If my uncles stretches his tall tales the surely this is somewhat embellished.
I remember a similar argument about how it was impossible for the Egyptians to have built the pyramids. It comes down to ‘I don’t understand how it could be done, so it’s impossible’
I mean - there’s not a lot of engineering mysteries involved in this. He ran. That’s the story. If he actually had a team of horses staged along the route or something that’s a different story.
Definitely insane but I don’t think it’s that insane. There are definitely far more embellishments that are unbelievable than that.
I do also think we should account for straight genetic freaks. They lived back then too. I doubt this guy was one but I’d bet the fastest person that ever lived has a higher likelihood of being lost to history than competing professionally today
To be fair, I don’t think the most gifted genetic freak in history running bare foot or in sandals would beat today’s elite with access to modern training science, nutrition and equipment. That stuff makes a huge difference.
Current high school students regularly beat Olympians’ times from like the early 1900s. They used to run on tracks made of ash or some shit.
To be fair the guy died after doing it. Even if you don’t have a sport team, I guess it’s possible if you push yourself to your absolute limits ?
They have ultra marathons where you run for 24 hours straight, and this guy would have smoked the current record holder going over rough terrain.
People in general are more athletic nowadays, but our top athletes are basically inhuman compared to athletes from 75 years ago, let alone 2000 years.
It’s most likely a straight up lie, or exaggerated by several multitudes. Ancient “historians” are pretty famous for exaggerating things to make things look more heroic.
For example Herodotus claimed Xerxes led an invasion force of over 5 million people, in reality it was more like 100k-300k. This was well known even as far back as the Roman, who called Herodotus both the father of history and the father of lies.
I mean yeah it’s definitely a lie I’m not saying it isn’t.
But I do think it’s not that insane of a lie. I mean for one apparently the guy died and for two genetic freak factor.
It’s insane, and science agrees. Read up on Functional Threshold Pace (FTP), which is what would be a factor in runs like this. The sheer amount of fueling (food+water) required to keep pace going would be insanely impossible for 480km, unaided, without stops. And I mean all caps INSANE.
I still think it’s pretty crazy. The “genetic freak factor” is still moderated by the conditions of their environment.
We have a lot more genetically gifted athletes now then back then, and our genetically gifted athletes grew up with diets fortified with vitamins and other nutrients. If modern athletes even slightly struggle with doing something similar, ancient athletes would find it impossible.
It’s just as crazy as claiming that someone from ancient greece would be able to compete on the same level as Usain Bolt in sprinting.
Also didn’t they have horses?
Not ridable ones. They used chariots because the horses weren’t bred to be big enough yet.
Horses actually just walk the whole way. You can do about 30 miles a day.
The Greeks weren’t really noted for their horsemanship and a man can outrun a horse anyway.
However having fresh horses at properly spaced outposts like the Romans used are far superior.
Yes, but at this time only your very wealthiest members of the aristocracy would be able to afford one. That part of greece is too mountainous to easily breed and take care of horses, so they became more of a status symbol than anything. It’s one of the reasons why Macedonia was able to conquer the southern Greek states with relative ease.
480 km in two days in the mountains
Sure ya did Pheidippides. Sure ya did.
Uphill, both ways. Sure, grandpa.
There are crazy people who do that shit. There’s a few 500 mille races out there that people complete in under a week.
There’s also the World Marathon Challenge, and the Great World Race.
7 marathons, 7 continents, 7 days.
But… they won… what was the big rush on his way back? Like if he was trying to outpace an incoming invasion, THAT I could understand. Was he in that much of a hurry to get the party started?
And thats why the ultra marathon exists
Nika or riot!
This is why every real marathon ends in spitting on a grave and saying “That’s how it’s done, bitch.”
I sub-2hr marathon is more impressive than you think.
You know how they say it’s a marathon, not a sprint? Well, it turns out if you sprint long enough you complete a marathon; most people can’t sprint for 2 hours, tho.
I haven’t seen the video but I read somewhere that they basically had to invent a new type of carbohydrate gel that could absorb calories into the runner’s stomach faster than any food ever had before, in order to make the time possible. Some scientist was working on this project for years. It’s crazy!
That gel is mentioned one in the video, but your comment already provides more information than I know about it.
The video mainly talks about how (a) the second half-marathon was actually faster than the first half-marathon (b) any of the 5k segment times would be a world-class pace and © take any race length, calculate their average time for that length across the marathon, and it’s damned impressive: their average 100m time was a good sprint time ad they did it nearly 430 times without stopping.
The author them matches their 400m pace for 400m, then collapses at 600m having already fallen off pace.
If you sprint faster, it doesn’t have to be 2 hours worth of sprinting. 😌
Try to match their avg 1k time / sprint speed. I know I can’t match their sprint speed for any of their averages, though I might get close on the 100m, if I could collapse at 100m.
I can barely sprint for 2 minutes.
I don’t think I could do a 7min. mile anymore, but even the 2-3 times I did, I felt like I was going pretty much all out for the whole time. So, at most I can sprint 7 minutes – and it’s probably much less.
He wasn’t even delivering some critical information or orders or anything. He died delivering news of the victory. I like his enthusiasm, but they could have waited a day. That’s the kind of initiative that gets rewarded with more work. Or death, apparently.
He did actually, even after losing whomever the greeks were fighting (Persians?), they send some boats up river to Athens, presumably to tell the city they won and extort whatever they could. So it was important that the Athenians knew the battle was won before the boats arrived.
Source: an ancient history podcast I listened to like two years ago. (So I am vague of the details)
Maybe in the story, the following narrators left out that he said, “I nearly died” around the bar table and didn’t actually die.
Pffff. He didn’t die after just 26 miles.
Dude ran from Athena to Sparti, then back. That’s not down the road.
Only one person said he did the short 42.2km from Marathon to Athena after his 480km round trip via mountains to the Spartans, but everyone at the time, including modern day historians, doubt it.
We recognise the ultra-race format and Spartathlon, but Marathon is not a Greek truth.
including modern day historians, doubt it.
Gasp… The ancient Greek exaggerating numbers…they would never do such a thing. How could a people lacking such moral fortitude fight off 3 million Persians?
Are you declining the names of the city states or using an uninflected spelling that’s more historical (or that you just prefer)?
If you’re declining, would it not be from Athenaikós to Spartaikí or are proper nouns handled differently?
It’s just what’s on the road signs in Greece. The cities are named Athenai (you see Athena and Athenai depending on where/age) and Sparti (which is Sparti in English anyway, but a lot of foreigners confuse it as Sparta, which is the entire region).
I don’t remember the exactly where in Sparta the run ended, but Sparti is basically in the middle, surrounded by all the agriculture in the valley, and the mountains up behind it, so for anyone playing at home, it’s easy to just imagine or Maps the route from Athens to Sparti or Athena/Athenai to Sparti.
Marathons should be ran in bronze made armor!
Why? Story goes that the guy was actually naked (or arrived naked).
If I recall correctly, he was hurrying to relay important war info, sound up saving the people he was warning
There are two main accoints of the story and, ironically, he didn’t actually manage anything useful in either of them
In the oldest one, he was sent from Athens to Sparta to ask for help against the invadng Persians. He ran 240 km in two days in this version of the story, only for the Spartans to say that actually they were busy with a religious festival and would not be coming to help. He then ran back. In this one he runs more than ten marathons in a matter of days and doesn’t die, and while the Spartans didn’t help someone did have to go ask to find that out
In the later one, he ran the 40 km from the battle of Marathon back to Athens to say “we won” and then die. Of course, there’s not really any strategic decisions required from the information of “we won”, so in this version he ran himself to death for basically no reason at all
The “we won” message was important because the Persians retreated with their navy mostly intact, and they suspected they would show up in Athens and pretend they won to get concessions from the city.
Well damn - I liked my version better where he was just really in a hurry to get the party started!
So the guy was hiding for two days behind a hill, then came out and said “I totally just run 240km and they said they not coming, sorry guys”.
I like that attitude.
I’d be dead after running 26 miles, but even dead I’d start a fight.
HA
Wait until they learn story behind “The North Face”.
I prefer The South Butt.
