Marathon and Spartathlon

While researching the first Persian invasion of Greece, I was surprised to discover that the origin stories behind the modern-day Marathon and Spartathlon races both involved misunderstandings about the ancient sources that inspired them.

Marathon

After the Battle of Marathon, the Athenian army runs back to their city before the Persian fleet can get there.

The modern-day Marathon race was inspired by the well-known legend of Philippides, a Greek messenger, who runs back to Athens from Marathon, then collapses and dies after announcing that the Athenians have won the Battle of Marathon. 

Our main source for the history of the Persian wars is Herodotus, but this legend never appears in his work. Instead of Philippides, Herodotus has the entire Athenian army rushing back to the city before the Persian fleet can get there, and the Athenian soldiers are running the entire 42-kilometer distance in full body armor, whereas a messenger like Philippides would dress as lightly as possible. But Philippides does actually appear in Herodotus' Histories, just in a completely different context from the famous legend: instead of running from Marathon to Athens, he has to run from Athens to Sparta and back, to request help from the Spartans against the Persian invasion. On this journey Philippides is said to have encountered the god Pan near Mount Parthenion - most likely a hallucination from exhaustion and dehydration after running continuously for more than a day. Herodotus describes Philippides as a professional long-distance runner, not as a soldier, and there is no indication that he ever set foot at Marathon or fought there.

Plutarch's De gloria Atheniensium contains a reference to a messenger called either Thersippus or Eucles, who fought in the Battle of Marathon, then ran back to Athens in full armor, and died from exhaustion immediately after announcing their victory. This is closer to the famous legend, but the name, and that he was in full armor are still different. Plutarch's sources for this information were ancient historians whose work didn't survive, but his account is compatible with Herodotus's.

The only ancient writer who actually describes the modern-day legend, and names Philippides as the messenger, is Lucian, but he was not a historian but a popular fiction writer known for his satirical and comedic style, and whose most famous work is the earliest known science fiction story. He lived more than six centuries after the events at Marathon, and he never cites his source for the legend. His work in which it appears, called "A Slip of the Tongue in Salutation" is clearly not meant to be taken seriously, and he either made an error when naming the runner, or the different legends described by ancient historians had merged into a fictionalized version by his time.

So Philippides or some other messenger running from Marathon to Athens without carrying heavy armor, which is what running an Olympic Marathon is supposed to resemble, is something that probably never happened. 

Spartathlon

Spartathlon route in black, the actual path of Philippides in blue, and the most likely path of the Spartan army in red

The 246-kilometer long Spartathlon race was also inspired by Philippides, but this time by the historical account of running from Athens to Sparta in a single day as described by Herodotus, and not by the legend about Marathon. However, the modern-day Spartathlon route assumes that the Mount Parthenion where Philippides had a vision of the god Pan was near the modern-day town of Sagkas. But Philippides must have taken a different path through the city of Argos, and Mount Parthenion must be identified with the mountains between Tegea and Hysiai. We know this because Pausanias's Description of Greece names all the roads and mountain passes leading out from Argolis, and it places Mount Parthenion on the road from Argos to Tegea, as the border between the two states. Pausanias describes in detail how to get there, and there isn't any ambiguity about its location. The mountains and passes around Sagkas that lead to ancient Mantinea are also described by Pausanias, and the mountains there are given different names, not Parthenion. The Barrington Atlas places Parhenion at the correct location too.

There is, however, another event in Herodotus' Histories with a path that resembles the Spartathlon route more than Philippides's journey: the march of the Spartan army to Marathon. And unlike a civilian messenger like Philippides, the Spartan army couldn't have marched through the territories of its arch-enemy, Argos, so it must have taken a longer route, and climbed one of the high mountains above Mantinea, most likely using the Kandila pass between Orchomenos and Phleious. But unlike the Spartathlon, the Spartans made this journey in the opposite direction, in 2 days instead of one, but in full armor. A quick google search tells me that the full armor of a Spartan soldier weighed 32 kilograms, the bronze shield alone was 14 kg. A forced march of 250 kilometers in that, including climbing up a more than 600-meter high mountain pass, sounds incredible. I don't know if Spartan hoplites had squires, if they did, then the squire could have carried the shield, and then the weight would be divided in half, but then the squires would need to have the same level of strength and stamina as the Spartan hoplites themselves so that they don't slow down the march.

But the Spartathlon route doesn't match perfectly with the path of the Spartan army either. Assuming that the Spartan army chose the shortest possible path that avoided Argos and its allies, then it must have passed through Phleious on its journey between Sparta and Athens. The Spartathlon, on the other hand, passes through Orneai and Nemea instead of Phleious, but these two towns belonged to Argos so the Spartan army couldn't have passed through there. So neither the military or the civilian messengers would have used the exact path of the modern-day Spartathlon.