To announce their victory, the Greeks dispatched a herald, named Pheidippides. He run the 42,195 kms ( 26 miles and 385 yards), and gave the one word message : "Nenikikamen" (We have won!). He then collapsed.
"So, when Persia was dust, all cried, "To Acropolis!
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 through clay,
Joy in his blood bursting his heart, - the bliss!"
Robert Browning ( 1812-1889)
This first major victory of the West against the East that would reach new heroic hights ten years later in Thermopylae and Salamis, was so important to the Greeks that the father of tragic poetry Aeschylus himself, upon his death around 456 BC, asked that his epitaph commemorated his participation in the Greek victory at Marathon rather than his success as a playwright:
- Αἰσχύλον Εὐφορίωνος Ἀθηναῖον τόδε κεύθει
- μνῆμα καταφθίμενον πυροφόροιο Γέλας·
- ἀλκὴν δ' εὐδόκιμον Μαραθώνιον ἄλσος ἂν εἴποι
- καὶ βαθυχαιτήεις Μῆδος ἐπιστάμενος
- "Beneath this stone lies Aeschylus, son of Euphorion, the Athenian,
- who perished in the wheat-bearing land of Gela;
- of his noble prowess the grove of Marathon can speak,
- or the long-haired Persian who knows it well".
On the plane of Marathon still stands the toom honouring the 192 dead Athenian soldiers.
On the tomb this epigram composed by the poet Simonides was written:
"Ελλήνων προμαχούντες Αθηναίοι Μαραθώνι
χρυσοφόρων Μήδων εστόρεσαν δύναμιν"
which means
"The Athenians, as defenders of the Hellenes, in Marathon
destroyed the might of the golden-dressed Medes".
This year marks 2500 years since the battle of Marathon, the victory of right against wrong, of humanity and civilisation of Europe against the vulgarity of gold and slavery of the East.
