Marathon – Where Does the Word Come From?
One of my goals with this blog is to share interesting little tidbits that I learn while teaching my little ones. My aim for these stories will be to share things that I wish I had remembered from school myself. Unfortunately, there will probably be plenty of material along these lines. Thus, my first post, regarding marathon, will be to share just one such tidbit…
In 490 B.C., King Darius was ruler of Persia. The previous king, King Cyrus, had left a mighty land, which included the former Babylon. Kind Darius decided it was time for him to expand the kingdom, and he set his sights on Greece. The Greeks had formerly given him trouble in the form of aid to subjects who had rebelled against him.
King Darius sent messengers to all of the cities of Greece ordering them to send him earth and water as a sign that they would peacably give him their land and become his subjects. Many cities did so, but Athens and Sparta refused. Athens and Sparta determined they would fight Persia and asked surrounding cities to join them.
Darius was angry, and sent 600 triremes carrying 200 soldiers each to war. That’s 120,000 soldiers. They sailed across the sea and landed on the plain of Marathon, twenty-six miles away from Athens.
The Athenians sent a message requesting help from Sparta, in the form of a famous runner named Pheidippides. He ran with little rest to carry the message to Sparta, about one hundred and fifty miles away. The Spartans were superstitious and thought it was bad luck to start a trip when the moon was full, so they sent word that they would join up when the moon was no longer full.
The Athenians knew they could not wait, so they sent soldiers to Marathon. They sent out 10,000 soldiers, along with 1,000 from a nearby village that wanted to help. So there were a total of 11,000 soldiers against Persia’s 120,000!
The Greeks were well trained athletes who were fighting for their freedom, homes, and families. The Persian were mostly slaves who were forced to fight by King Darius.
The Athenians were victorious. They called once again on Pheidippides to carry the message that they had won back to Athens, which was twenty-six miles away. He had recently run from Athens to Sparta, and back with very little rest, so he was a bit weary. He ran from Marathon to Athens with the wonderful news of their victory and immediately upon sharing the news, he fell over dead!
As a way of honoring Pheidippides and his famous run, we now have what are called marathons, in which runners complete a twenty-six mile journey, the same distance that was run from Marathon to Athens.
This is one of the most famous battles in history, because huge Persia was beaten by tiny Athens. However, this was not the last time the Greeks were to see the Persians…
We read this story in one of our favorite books for teacking the kids world history, which can be purchased from Amazon here: