PHEIDIPPIDES FORCED himself to stir. Just to move took a supreme effort. He was amazed at the force of the arrow that had struck him and knocked him to the dust. It seemed the arrow had done little more than graze his arm, but the force of the missile’s descent had spun him and thrown him to the ground. He remembered thinking about the force of the arrow while he was trying to regain his footing and resume his charge toward the Persians. It was such a foolish thing to be thinking about while Persian arrows flew all round him, but one’s mind can do such strange things in battle.

The little olive tree under which he now rested offered precious little shade from the relentless sun. He tried to find a position to allow his weary body to gain a moment’s rest. His weariness was bone-deep, accumulated over too many miles in too few days. He glanced at his hands and saw that they were still stained with blood from the recent carnage. He fought the incursion of the numbness to all of this that tried to take over his brain. This was the first time he had been off his feet in hours.

It was hot—far hotter than it should be in the middle of September. His armor—helmet, shield, breastplate, and greaves—seemed to attract the rays of the fierce sun. September was always a hot month in Greece, but this year it was even hotter than usual. The gentle breeze from the nearby Aegean didn’t help.

The question he’d been asking himself for the past several days zipped through his mind like the arrow that had wounded him: Why in the world did I offer myself as a runner? Was it because General Miltiades had impressed me with his talk of bravery and valor? What was I thinking, to be a soldier and a runner simultaneously? The work was tough, grueling, exhausting, dangerous—but exhilarating.

Pheidippides had decided last spring that he would leave the army when his current commitment was over. He had given Athens 11 years of his life. He was now 33 years old and wanted to be able to spend some time with his wife and son, who were safely stashed away with her grandparents in Corinth. For a moment, as he pushed himself to an elbow against the crushing weight of his armor, he wondered if he was going to live long enough to see his family again. He smiled grimly. He’d survived the last few days and was still alive after being grazed by a Persian arrow. Perhaps the gods smiled upon his hard work on behalf of Athens.

His mind rushed to Corinth, such a beautiful city, sitting on the hills above the Gulf. Pheidippides had always enjoyed visiting the city. It was peaceful—slow and unhurried. He loved roaming the hills surrounding the Gulf. Mostly he just plain loved to run. He would follow game trails for hours, up and down hills. Never a worry about getting lost; the sea was to the north and the Acrocorinth to the south. His wife was born and raised not far from Corinth.

He hoped that his son was running the hills and fishing the Gulf, as he had done and as his own father had done before him. Pheidippides saw himself standing near the Temple of Apollo, gazing out over the Gulf. What a magnificent sight! With the exception of the Acropolis in Athens, he felt that the Acrocorinth was the most impressive spot on Earth.

He remembered traveling with his family up the hundreds of marble steps to the Acrocorinth—a spot both sacred and safe. Pity the Persian who tried to ascend the Acrocorinth. He would be buried below a flow of boulders and stones long before the heavy spears began coming down on him.

Pheidippides hated war. He hated the battles, the sour smells, and the moans and lamentations of the dying. But he strongly believed in defending his homeland. He despised the thought of his son growing up under the heel of the Persians.

Damn the Persians! Just the thought of that enemy caused him to shudder in anger. And for King Darius, the Persian leader, Pheidippides had a class of hatred all his own. Darius, with his ambitious plans to extend the Persian empire far beyond its boundaries. How dare he sail across the Aegean to attack peaceful Athens!

For a moment Pheidippides grasped at the olive tree, orienting himself before pushing himself all the way up off the ground. What day was it anyway? Maybe the 17th? Yes, yes, September 17. He had almost lost track of time. Yes, yes, because yesterday had been the 16th, when he’d arrived back at the site of the battle. The days before were a horrible blur. Only five days earlier he’d been selected to run to Sparta to seek aid against the Persians from the fellow city-state. It had been a mind-boggling ordeal. None of the runners in the other phili had ever been asked to run such a distance.

He had set out early afternoon of the 12th and had run continuously for nearly 48 hours. Forty-eight hours! Two solid days and nights of running, with no rest. He covered more than 100 kilometers each day, much of it over hills. Water was scarce, as was food. By the time he finally arrived at Sparta, he was exhausted. But he had met with the Spartans and had delivered the plea from Athens for their help.

He found them willing enough to help, for it would be in their own best interests to keep the Persians out of Greece, but Spartan law forbade them from departing until the moon had reached its fullest. That would be several more days and would most certainly cause the Spartans to arrive after the battle.

He set off on his journey to Marathon. He ran through his exhaustion, through day and night. When he reported back to General Miltiades to deliver the bad news, he was reluctant at first, but then he decided to tell the General of his encounter with the god Pan as he’d come out of the mountains near Sparta. It was almost like the vision of a man in fever, but he remembered it vividly. Pan was very upset with the Athenians, for they were not showing him proper respect. Pan gave to Pheidippides threats to deliver to the Athenians, warnings of the loss of his support should they not increase their reverence of him.

What Pheidippides saw when he had returned to Marathon was frightening in its own way. Scores of Persian ships were beached on the edge of the sea. Smoke from thousands of cook fires told of tens of thousands of invaders camped near the beach while more disembarked. The sight was massive and frightening. In shear numbers, it appeared that the Athenians would stand little chance against the heavily armed infantry and cavalry of the Persians. Athens had no cavalry and certainly no bows that could counter the longbows in the hands of the Persian archers who could strike death from afar.

The prime Athenian defensive weapons were their long and heavy spears. But the small contingent of Athenians and Plataeans had something that made them great. They had visionary leadership. The 10 generals, one in charge of each phili, were seasoned veterans and excelled in battle tactics. That was Miltiades’s strong suit.

From his position on the littered ground, Pheidippides was unsure of what had occurred when the battle began. By all indications, the Persians had lined up exactly as they normally did: elbow to elbow, 30 men deep. By the time the army lined up in their standard positions, the 48,000 Persians formed a line 1,600 meters wide.

Against that massive force, General Miltiades lined up his 10,000 soldiers, increasing their strength on the flanks, with eight men deep, but weak in the center, where it was only four men deep.

The Athenians, more lightly armored than the enemy and trained in athletic endeavors, had made the terrible dash across the killing zone, where arrows from the longbows fell like hail. The hand-to-hand fighting had begun after Pheidippides fell and the center of the Athenian army collapsed. Through this vacuum, the Persians poured by the thousands. But then Miltiades brought his flanking soldiers around and closed the hole, trapping the Persians. The longbows were ineffective against the expertly wielded long spears of the Athenians.

The dust was still rising from the plain in front of Pheidippides, but he was at an elevated enough position to see that the strategy had worked perfectly. He remembered the screams and moans of the impaled Persians as the sound rose above the clang and clash of armor and spear.

Pheidippides felt fortunate. He was not seriously wounded—only dog-tired and sore. He wound a scrap of cloth around the arrow wound and saw that most of the bleeding had stopped. At least he was still alive, as, he noted, were most of his fellow Greeks.

Not many of them were dead—or not as many as there could have been, or by all rights should have been. Not that this reasoning would matter to the families of the Greeks who had died on behalf of their city-state.

He surveyed the field, where soldiers staggered about, raising dust around their feet, where arrows protruded from the ground, where spears impaled enemy Persians. Of the 10,000 Greek soldiers, Pheidippides estimated that not more than 200 had been killed. On the Persian side, it was another matter. Though it was hard to estimate such numbers, difficult to sort the dead from the dying with a quick glance, he estimated there were more than 6,000 Persians dead before him.

The sights and sounds of the battle continued to come back to Pheidippides in a rush. He remembered passing the body of the young water boy who had been weaving his way among the waiting Athenians, passing out water to sate their thirst before the battle. A Persian arrow had pierced the body of the young boy, and the sight of him lying on the hard ground had further served to incense the Athenian soldiers as they began their charge.

What a battle! A small force had defended their homeland against a far superior force. Some 10,000 versus 48,000 hard, tough Persians equipped with longbows. The Hellenes had fought like wild animals, with only spears.

Pheidippides staggered to his feet as he heard his name called from down the line. It was Epikides calling to him, a soldier he had met on several occasions. He dreaded hearing what Epikides wanted of him. Pheidippides wanted badly to lie back down in the sparse shade of the little olive bush and disappear. He felt incapable of remaining on his feet.

“Pheidippides!” Epikides called. “The General wants to see you. General Miltiades wants you. He is standing by that outcropping of rocks just south of the hill.”

As he made his way to where the General stood, Pheidippides fought off a nausea of fatigue that threatened to bring him to his knees. He had a suspicion of what lay ahead for him.

* * * * *

Dimitrios was tired of playing with his sister Melita. Unfortunately, all the other young people had left the village long ago, and she was the only child left. People from the neighboring villages had packed up and moved up to the Acropolis. Everyone was convinced that the Persians would very soon come marching down the road. Everyone knew that the Athenian army had already traveled to Marathon to engage the Persians. Dimitrios had stood in awe as the soldiers proudly marched past his village on their way to their fate, just 30 kilometers away.

Reliable word had also come that the Persian navy was headed toward Athens to attack it from behind, so everyone in the village had packed up and headed for higher ground: the scant safety of the Acropolis. Correction: Not everyone. Not his father, Ephor. No. Ephor wasn’t about to be scared off his land by the threat of an invading force, even if it was the mighty Persians. No force in nature would get him away from the land, the olive orchard, the vineyard that his great, great, great grandfather had tended. No Persian was that strong.

Neither was the old blind man, Spyros, moving out of the way. He lived down the trail from Dimitrios and was Dimitrios’s friend, the source of all Dimitrios’s knowledge about what was going on in the world. Spyros had been an officer in the army until he was blinded in an accident. They talked for hours on end about the new democracy and other developments in the Athenian government.

They talked also about the military, and Dimitrios had long ago decided he would become a member of the army in a few years. It would be an acknowledgment of fate. Spyros often related the story of the day that Dimitrios was born. He was the third child in his family, the first boy after two girls. His aunt had received word of his birth first, and she ran like mad toward the rest of his family and made the announcement, yelling at the top of her lungs, “Soldier!”

Dimitrios made it his business to know each of the soldiers from his village; he attentively listened to their tales of faraway places and great battles.

Before he headed home, Dimitrios stopped at the community well and drew a bucket of water and drank deeply. He also filled the goatskin pouch he always carried with him and tied the leather strings tightly to avoid spilling the precious water.

Just as he turned to head home, Dimitrios glanced down the dusty road and spotted a lone soldier off in the distance. The soldier appeared to be in full battle gear, and he was running, yes, running toward Dimitrios. No doubt about it: this was an official “runner,” an important messenger, as no soldier in his right mind would be out in the oppressive heat in full battle gear. He was headed toward Athens with an important message.

Dimitrios had heard tales of such soldiers, men who had the stamina and heart to push their bodies and their minds to the limits of human endurance. Runners were regarded with awe. It was rumored that they received their strength from the gods themselves. Spyros had told Dimitrios some of the stories of these godlike men; he even knew some of their names. Dimitrios remembered Christopoulos from the highlands north of Athens. And there was another, more widely known, but Dimitrios couldn’t quite remember his name.

Runners did not run unless they had a very important purpose. And gazing upon this approaching runner, there was no doubt but that he carried a special message for someone—probably someone in great power in the government in Athens.

But as the brave soldier came closer, it became apparent that he was having difficulty. His gait was slow, his head was down, his arms carried high, as though he were trying to run as much by using his arms as his legs. As the runner came still closer, Dimitrios’s fears were confirmed. The man’s color was ashen, his eyes were fixed at some vague point ahead, and his jaws were clenched.

It was apparent that the man had run from the battleground at Marathon, some 30 kilometers away. He would have had to climb across the mountainous area laying between the plain of Marathon and the basin that surrounded Athens. That murderous stretch was more than 25 kilometers wide. Lucky for the runner, he had that section of road safely behind him. What remained of the route to Athens was fairly flat. Still, the mountains had exacted a heavy toll on the runner. It seemed questionable if he would make it another kilometer, much less all the way to Athens.

Dimitrios glanced at the goatskin pouch the runner carried and saw it was flat. No water. Small wonder. There was probably no one left in any of the villages along the path to offer him water, and, given the drought that had plagued Greece in recent years, no streams and very few wells were still flowing. Besides, warriors like this didn’t have time to idle around and draw water. He was obviously on a very important mission.

And there was another odd thing about the runner. He wasn’t perspiring! It was very apparent that he had sweated, and a lot. There was white salt residue visible on his shield and his breastplate. His clothes were wet, but his skin was dry and pale.

* * * * *

The news that Pheidippides had dreaded had, unfortunately, come through. He was informed that he was needed to run to Athens as quickly as possible to tell the leaders of the country of the great victory their countrymen had achieved at Marathon.

It was an honor, General Miltiades explained, to bear such wonderful news. He was to depart immediately to arrive in Athens before dark, when the massive gates of the Acropolis are closed against danger. He was to share his news with no one he encountered along the way, as it was first and foremost for the ears of the city’s leaders. And, oh yes, there was one more matter: he was to run in his full armor in order to demonstrate to people who saw him en route that he had not been forced to relinquish his armor to the enemy in battle.

When Pheidippides reached the first foothills after leaving the plain of Marathon, he felt for his goatskin water pouch. Then the realization hit him: in his fatigue-driven stupor, he had made the terrible blunder of leaving Marathon without filling his meager water pouch! Just a half liter remained, but surely he would be able to get it filled by friendly villagers along the way. . .

* * * * *

If Pheidippides concentrated very hard, he could distinguish that the little village dog was not a wolf, that the bush ahead of him was not a Persian soldier, and that the wind was not speaking to him. He could stop the hallucinations, but it was much easier to fade away into an earlier time and place far away in order to face the steep grades he was encountering. He knew the contour of this land; it was not friendly to rapid travel.

As he progressed, his thirst seemed to bother him less and less. The desire to drink had abated in the wake of the last time he had vomited. Each time he managed to push back the cobwebs from his brain, he observed that the sun was dropping lower and lower in the western sky. He thought that he must have been running two hours or more, and that would put him a little more than halfway to Athens. But he knew he was confused. Earlier, as he neared the summit of one of the little mountains, he had distinctly heard his father speaking to him. Perhaps if he could just stop for a moment and sit in the shade? But he could not. His training and strong will would not permit it. His pace slowed on the steep grades, but he willed himself to keep his legs moving on this most important mission of his life.

Was that his son ahead on the trail? It couldn’t be. Or could it? Maybe it was a Persian soldier, sent to waylay him. Or perhaps another visit from Pan?

Dimitrios saw the runner stiffen, and he thought for a moment that he was going to strike out at him with the short sword he carried. The runner uttered something unintelligible, a name perhaps, but Dimitrios did not understand. He did realize, suddenly, that this was the famous runner that Spyros had told him about. His name was Pheidippides.

After four kilometers, Dimitrios was still running step for step with the famous runner. He had finally convinced Pheidippides to take some of the water he carried, and for a time it revived the soldier. It was uncanny, but somehow the soldier seemed to know him. Dimitrios assumed that the runner’s destination was the Acropolis since that was the only word he could understand from the runner’s parched and cracked lips. A few steps after the runner drank the last of Dimitrios’s water, he became sick and lost the little water he had taken in.

Pheidippides was now incoherent and struggling. Twice he had taken the wrong trail and Dimitrios had to grab his arm and set him straight. He had to be careful to grab the runner’s good arm, as his other arm had a horrible cut on it and it was bleeding through the dirty rag wrapped around it. Fortunately, the Acropolis was now visible, probably not more than five kilometers away.

The sun was very low as Dimitrios started up the long grade and marble steps leading to the Acropolis. Pheidippides had seemed content to follow Dimitrios’s lead over the last few kilometers. Dimitrios had wondered whether Pheidippides could regain his footing after the last time he had fallen, but he had bravely pulled himself back to his feet. But he was spent, totally and completely, and the ordeal had left him physically and mentally void except for the sacred message he carried. Dimitrios hoped that the man didn’t pass out before he was able to complete his task.

Dimitrios felt like a warrior himself as the crowd parted for him and Pheidippides to pass. They had made it to the top of the Acropolis and through the heavy gates just before they were closed and sealed for the night. There must

have been 20,000 people in the crowd, mostly women, old men, and children. Dimitrios could feel the envious stares of the boys his age as he continued to run interference for Pheidippides.

The marble floor of the Temple was cool. Dimitrios could feel it through the soles of his sandals. He now had the feeble Pheidippides by the arm and was walking him up to the crowd. The elders, temple and political leaders, had quickly gathered, awaiting the official message from the Plain of Marathon. The murmuring crowd stilled as Dimitrios and Pheidippides approached the leaders of Athens.

Pheidippides’s cracked lips moved, but no sound came forth. The anxious chief elder asked him several times to repeat what he had to say. The crowd was hushed as Dimitrios tried in vain to hear and understand what Pheidippides was saying.

It took Pheidippides several seconds to focus on Dimitrios. Dimitrios could feel Pheidippides looking past his eyes and down a road only he could see, deep into his soul. Dimitrios was certain Pheidippides thought Dimitrios was someone else, someone he loved and was close to—maybe his own son?

“N-i-k-e.” It sounded like “Nike.” Could that be the word?

“Pheidippides! Try again. Tell me. Say it one more time!” Dimitrios saw Pheidippides muster all his remaining strength. And while looking squarely into Dimitrios’s eyes, the word came out. There was no doubt this time, not to Dimitrios, who alone heard it. No doubt whatsoever.

“NIKE! NIKE! NIKE! He said ‘NIKE!'” Dimitrios screamed. VICTORY, VICTORY for Athens! Victory over the mighty Persians! Victory. Nike, Nike!

Dimitrios knew that Pheidippides was dead when he crumbled to the floor of the Temple. He was certain of that. The scribes pushed Dimitrios out of the way and tried to revive Pheidippides, but they soon realized it was too late. Pheidippides, the great all-day runner, was dead. The end of his mission had come.

*   *   *   *   *

Dimitrios was tired of playing with his sister Melita. He had things to do. He had to do some chores for his father and visit with Spyros. Then, later, he had to run. He was now running every day, and today he was planning to run from his village to Athens and back. Twenty kilometers. He had to get himself into shape. There was so little time. He wanted to be a runner in the army, and he had to train hard. He was going to be a great runner . . . a great runner.