Re-inventing Marathon
WEDNESDAY, 10 NOVEMBER 2010 15:18
Today’s Greece has recently commemorated the 2,500 year old Athenian military victory over the ancient Persians. The Greek capital is pulling out all the stops to remind people how the city-state of Athens defeated the Persian army in 490 B.C. at the Battle of Marathon. The Marathon Project will be held in the Athens Acropolis Museum under the auspices of the ministry of culture and tourism. This includes an international array of marathon-format events based on the idea of superhuman endeavor.
The celebrations reach a climax with the 28th Athens Classic Marathon. More than 20,000 athletes from every part of the world are expected to take part in this race from the battlefield of Marathon to the Marble Panathenaikon Stadium, a distance of 42 kilometers.
While this may produce a sense of the past that is very real in its consequences, the nature ascribed to the events of the commemoration is rarely in agreement with the actual historical record (Roudometof, 2005: 36).
The act of utilizing ancient history for modern propaganda purposes stinks of antiquitisation. Modern Greek society has been built on the claim that they are the heirs of the ancient Greeks. A claim that is hard to swallow when the facts say differently.
‘Traditions’ which appear or claim to be old are often quite recent in origin and sometimes invented (Hobsbawm, 1983: 1).
A Frenchman, not a Greek, Michel Bréal, is credited with the invention of the marathon race. He made the suggestion to put this event on the program of the (official) first modern Olympics in Athens in 1896 in which Spiridon Louis won the first ever marathon (Cummings, 2010).
Spiridon Louis was born in 1873 in Marousi which is just north of Athens. Marousi once held a significant Albanian (Arvanite) community (Liotta, 1999: 64).
An anonymous English volunteer during the Greek war of independence passed through Marousi and saw “a thousand inhabitants, who wore the foustanella, and spoke the Albanian language amongst themselves” (Anon, 1838: 624).
Evangelis Zappas (1800-1865) is recognized as the founder of the modern Olympics. Zappas had initiated the Olympics with his own version in 1859.
He was born in an Albanian speaking village (Labove) in Epirus (Young, 2002: 13). The Albanian Zappas would be the catalyst and benefactor for building the Zappeion (which is named after him) and for refurbishing the marble Panathenaikon Stadium which is used for the Marathon commemoration.
His head now rests in the Zappeion in which a plaque reads in Greek; “Here lies the head of Evangelis Zappas” and his body rests in his village of birth in Southern Albania in which his tombstone, written in Albanian, states; “Here lies the bones of the philanthropist Evangelis Zappas” (Young, 2004: 149). The Vlach George Averoff also helped finance the second refurbishment of the Panathenaikon stadium in which his statue stands at the entrance. The final refurbishment designs for the stadium were based on the designs of Ernst Ziller, a German. He is so important to modern Greek history that a biography of this German is found on the Presidency of the Hellenic Republic website (
Presidency of the Hellenic Republic ).
The Marathon myth is another area which throws up many red flags. One news article writes the following about the Marathon myth:
The myth of Pheidippides (also referred to as Phidippides or Philippides) is likely based on other stories with stronger historical foundations.
Fifth century B.C. Greek historian Herodotus, the “father of history,”
made no mention of Pheidippides running to Athens in his account of the Battle of Marathon. He did write that before the battle Pheidippides was sent to Spart to ask the Spartans for assistence. He completed the run (estimated to be between 140 and 153 miles) in two days and then immediately raced back to Marathon.
Herodotus also wrote that after the battle the Athenian army hurried back to Athens so that the Persians, who had escaped on their ships, could not attack the undefended city. According to Dutch ancient historian Jona Lendering, creator of the Web site Livius, the Pheidippides myth is a combination of his epic run and the Athenians’ march to Athens.
The first account of Pheidippides running to Athens did not appear until the second century A.D., when Greek writer Lucian wrote in his “True History,” “Philippides the hemerodromos, reporting the victory from Marathon to the archons, Who were seated anxiously awaiting the result of the battle, said, ‘rejoice, we have won,’ and saying this, died at the same time as his report, expiring with the salutation.”
Lucian, however, was a satirist, not a historian. “His True History contains nothing of any historical value whatsoever, but he had a great time making fun of the serious writers of his day,” writes archaeologist Jim D. Muhly, former director of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens.
The myth also appeared in Plutarch’s 347 A.D. work “Moralia,” though Plutarch said the runner was named Eukles or Thersippus.
The story of Pheidippides was popularized in the 19th century. In 1834, French sculptor Cortot completed a sculpture in Paris’ Tuileries Palace of Pheidippides dying as he announced victory. In 1879, English poet Robert Browning wrote the poem "Phaedippides" which stated:
“Unforeseeing one! Yes, he fought on the Marathon day:
So, when Persia was dust, all cried ‘To Akropolis!
Run, Pheidippides, one race more! the meed is thy due!
“Athens is saved, thank Pan,” go shout!’ He flung down his shield, Ran like fire once more: and the space ‘twixt the Fennel-field
And Athens was stubble again, a field which a fire runs through,
Till in he broke: ‘Rejoice, we conquer!’ Like wine thro’ clay,
Joy in his blood bursting his heart, he died—the bliss!”
Nineteen years after the poem, the marathon race was created. “It is probable that this poem and not the actual historical facts, would have been in the minds of those, who not twenty years later, would be concerned with the revival of the Olympic Games and the formation of any possible events which could provide a link with the past,” wrote R. Grogan in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. (Cummings, 2010)
An American traveler passing through Marathon in the late 19th century records, with humor, what he sees in Marathon:
I was on the soil of illustrious Marathon, expectant gazes were centered upon me ; what had I, as a true American, to do for the honor of my country? My duty was clear from the start, I must make a speech. I would have been unfaithful to my nationality, had I not done so at Marathon. Accordingly I shoved the table aside, pulled out my bench, and in the full happiness of hunger and thirst satisfied—perhaps too a little aglow with the golden recinato— I began to address them as follows:
Andres Marathonioi—Ye men of Marathon—at this point I confess I had to laugh to myself, looking into that solid Albanian stare of fifty faces, for the echo of the tremendous oath of Demosthenes in which he swears by the heroes of Marathon, rung through my ears and made the situation appallingly ludicrous. Still, in spite of my laugh, you must know that I was in deep earnest and full of my theme; moreover there were at least four persons before me who could understand both my Greek and my allusions. As to my Greek, I affirm that Demosthenes himself would have understood it, had he been there—though he might have criticised the style and pronunciation. (Snider, 1881: 87-88)
It is inconceivable to believe that today’s Greek has anything at all to do with the ancient Marathon history and myth. All six degrees of separation leave us with a French - Albanian - Albanian - Vlach - German - Albanian history more relevant to the modern Greeks than the absurd notion of some ancient revival of re-invented traditions alien in culture and race to modern Greece.
References:
Anonymous, (1838) “Sketches of Modern Greece” Blackwood's Edinburgh magazine, Volume 43.
Cummings, Dennis “The Myth of Pheidippides and the Marathon.” Finding Dulcinea. 5 Nov. 2010. Web. 10 Nov. 2010. The Myth of Pheidippides and the Marathon.
Hobsbawm, Eric (1983) The Invention of Tradition Cambridge University Press.
Roudometof, Victor (2005) “Toward an archaeology of national commemoration in the Balkans” in National symbols, fractured identities: contesting the national narrative edited by Michael E. Geisler, New England, Middlebury College Press.
Snider, D. (1881) A Walk in Hellas St. Louis, Privately Printed.
Young, D. (2002) The Modern Olympics: A Struggle for Revival Baltimore and London, The Johns Hopkins University Press.
- A brief history of the Olympic games MA, Blackwell Publishing.
Liotta, P. (1999) The wreckage reconsidered: five oxymorons from Balkan deconstruction USA, Lexington Books
