"The water is up in Wine Creek," cried Joe Wel- ling with the air of
Pheidippides bringing news of the victory of the Greeks in the struggle at Mara- thon.
3.10 (1m 1yds, PS5,800 added): 1 SHAMLAHAR (J Mitchell) 5-4Fav; 2 ONEOVDEM 10-3; 3
PHEIDIPPIDES 5-1.
Intriguingly,
Pheidippides - the man who ran the first marathon in antiquity - collapsed soon after delivering his message.
It is based on the historical run of
Pheidippides who ran between the two cities before the Battle of Marathon.
Based upon a popular myth stemming from the Battle of Marathon, in which
Pheidippides ran to Athens from the town of Marathon to carry the message of a Greek victory, the 1896 course began in the town of Marathon and finished in Athens' Panathenaic Stadium - a distance of around 40 kilometres (25 miles).
The series of prints commissioned by the GPO from Armstrong in 1935, for instance, consists of four gouache illustrations of scenes from the history of human communication, ranging from a red-figure style depiction of the Athenian courier
Pheidippides through a medieval messenger and a Georgian mail-coach to a 1930s postman mounted on a motorcycle (Fig.
The 26-mile course followed the path of
Pheidippides, who ran from Marathon to Athens to bring news of a victory over the Persians in ancient times.
(2) The image also brought to my mind the Classical Greek story of
Pheidippides running from Marathon to Athens to announce the Athenian victory over the Persians--though Anishinaabe runners may have been fitter than those in ancient Greece, for
Pheidippides apparently expired upon delivering his message.
100 in Greece, retracing the ancient footsteps of
Pheidippides in Greek lore.
As legend has it, the original was run by the Greek messenger
Pheidippides from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens in order to announce that the Persians had been defeated.