Athlete Marathon Attica classical period Praxiteles 340 330 BC Greek Greece Museum

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Marathon is an ancient Greek city-state, a contemporary town in Greece, the site of the battle of Marathon in 490 BC, in which the heavily outnumbered Athenian army defeated the Persians. The name of the athletic long-distance endurance race, the "marathon", comes from the legend of Pheidippides, a Greek soldier, who was sent from the town of Marathon to Athens to announce that the Persians had been miraculously defeated in the Battle of Marathon. It is said that he ran the entire distance without stopping, but moments after proclaiming his message "Nenikekamen" ("We were Victorious!") to the city he collapsed dead from exhaustion. The account of the run from Marathon to Athens first appears in Plutarch's On the Glory of Athens in the 1st century AD who quotes from Heraclides Ponticus'

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Size: 3369px × 5433px
Location: Athens
Photo credit: © Peter Horree / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No

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