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orty-five minutes after we leave
central Athens, at about 9 a.m., the
ticket collector on my bus tells me
I’ve reached my destination.
“Here?” I say.
“Here,” he confirms, and points over my
shoulder. “Can walk. Is near.”
As the bus pulls away, I wonder if some-
thing got lost in translation—this doesn’t
look quite right. A er walking along the
highway inthemiddleofnowhere for some
time, I pass a gardenerwhoverifies that I’m
ge ingwarmer and vaguely gestures over
yonder, to the site of the Ba le of Mara-
thon. The ramifications ofwhat happened
on this fertile plain 2,500 years ago are so
colossal, so far-reaching that I can scarcely
believe how inconspicuous the site is. I’ve
seen more enthusiastic signage for giant
balls of twine.
I head off through farmland, olive
groves and clusters of upscale villas before
eventually stumbling upon a fenced-in
field do ed with slender Mediterranean
cypress trees. I followthe fence around the
perimeter andpay three euros toget inside.
I’m the one and only visitor this morn-
ing, and the atmosphere is incredibly
tranquil. In the middle of the field is a
burial mound containing the remains of
the 192 citizen-soldiers of Athens, called
hoplites, who gave their lives in the ba le.
The mound doesn’t look like much, but
standing in front of it gives me the most
profound feeling of awe: I’mvery near the
spot where, in 490 B.C., an army of 9,000
Athenians and 1,000 of their allies from
the town of Plataea faced off against
a much larger force of Persian invad-
ers and, against all odds, won. The feat
brought an end to Persia’s first invasion
of central Greece andwould inspire other
Greek city-states to victory at the similarly
mismatched battles of Thermopylae
(ab-tastically rendered in the film
300
) and
Salamis 10 years later.
It’s difficult to overstate the signifi-
cance of the Battle of Marathon in the
scope of world history. The Greek victory
helped safeguard Athenian democracy a
mere 18 years a er its birth, protecting
the very conditions under which Socrates,
Plato and Aristotle would soon codify
Western philosophy. This burgeoning
dēmokratía
inspired the ideals of the
Roman Republic and every society that’s
sought self-governance ever since.
Another, more curious legacy of the
battle is an extremely popular running
race with an unlikely length of 26 miles,
385 yards: the marathon. Getting to the
bottom of that one—and retracing the
fabled original route—is why I’m here.
ccording to legend (which is
disputed by historians), as the sur-
viving Persians fled to their ships
after the Battle of Marathon, a
long-distance runner namedPheidippides
was dispatched to take the unexpected
good news toAthens, some 25miles south-
west of the ba lefield. Despite having just
participated in the fight himself, he ran the
entire way without stopping, burst into
the assembly of Athens’ leaders andman-
aged to blurt out, “We have won!” before
keeling over, dead.
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