Pheidippidēs (or Philippides), the Athenian runner who, according to Herodotus (6. 105–6), was sent to request help from Sparta before the battle of Marathon in 490 BC (see PERSIAN WARS, also PAN). He arrived there the day after he left Athens, covering in that time a distance of 200 km. (125 miles) or more. On his way back he is said to have met the god Pan. The basis of the modern Marathon race (introduced at the first modern Olympic games at Athens in 1896) is a legend, which has no authority, that he ran from Athens to Marathon (a distance of about 40 km., 25 miles) in order to join in the battle against the Persians, then ran back to Athens and, having announced the victory (‘Greetings, we win!’), dropped dead. The distance of 26 miles 386 yards (42.195 km.) was not standardized until the 1908 Olympic Games in London; this peculiarly precise figure was the distance between the starting-point at Windsor Castle and the finish at White City Stadium.

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