On The Road – Athenaze and Ariobarzanes – In the Footsteps of the Marathonomachoi: Walking the Athens Marathon (Part 1 of 2)

The Athens Marathon begins at the multi-use stadium on the outskirts of the modern town of Marathon. One of the first things participants see as they approach the stadium (but sadly not THE first—see below) is Nikos Georgiou’s 2014 statue of Nikē, goddess of victory. Holding a victor’s wreath of laurel leaves in her outstretched hand, Nikē stands on a plinth inscribed with a verse written by Simonides in the early 5^th century BCE. The verse commemorates the Athenians who fought at Marathon (immortalized in Athenian popular consciousness as the marathonomachoi, “those who fought at Marathon”), praising them as the defenders of all of the Greeks. Nikē herself, these days, now constantly weathers the attentions of tourists who clamber all over her in search of the perfect selfie.

Placing the statue here was, to say the least, an interesting choice on the part of the municipality. The modern Athens Marathon is, formally, dedicated to Gregoris Lambrakis, an anti-war activist assassinated by far-right extremists in 1963. Yet almost every bit of popular lore concerning the race associates it in participants’ minds with the battle against the Persians.

(We would love to say that the Nikē statue was the first thing we saw after disembarking the bus—but, instead, we were greeted by the sight of dozens and dozens of men peeing on pretty much anything they could at the side of the road. An hour in a bus is apparently too much for the bladders of would-be modern-day marathonomachoi.)

The morning hours preceding the race were an interesting study in controlled chaos. We, along with most of the other 21,000 or so participants, made the trip from central Athens to Marathon in buses organized by the race committee. Participants began assembling at designated pickup points at 5:30am, where they jostled for seats in one of what seemed to be an endless line of buses. Once at Marathon, everyone milled about in or near the stadium for up to two hours until the race began at 9am, gradually coming together into their designating holding areas as start time approached. After the initial starting gun went off, it took almost an hour for all the participants to cross the starting line.

This photo shows those of us who were in the last of the 12 starting blocks. Blocks 10 through 12 were reserved for participants who could not document a previous successful completion time faster than 6 hours 30 minutes—so, a curious mix of first time runners, of people planning to run a relatively slow race, and of people like us who chose to walk the entire route rather than run.

Although the race follows the main modern road from Marathon to Athens, it does break away between the 4^th and 6^th kilometers to trace a loop around an archaeological park housing the remains of a large funerary mound. Built over a large cremation tray and covering both the cremains of several dozen individuals and pottery from the early 5^th century BCE, it is almost certainly the resting place of the 192 Athenian citizens who were killed in battle at Marathon. In antiquity, it was (probably) crowned by ten stelae, each of which memorialized the dead belonging to one of the main civic “tribes” into which the Athenian citizenry was divided (and one of which may have been recently discovered, though debate still rages over its authenticity).

The scale of the monument reflects the importance that the Athenians attached to their victory at Marathon. For them, the campaign was an existential one: Darius, Great King of the Persian Empire, aimed to topple the young Athenian democracy and install a compliant autocrat to govern it on his behalf—Hippias son of Peisistratos, former strong-man ruler of Athens, who had been driven into exile in the late sixth century and had been pining to stage a triumphant return ever since.

The irony is that, according to some sources, the Athenians preserved their democracy at Marathon with the help of their enslaved servants, who probably participated in the fighting when part of the Athenian line broke (and who were later set free as a reward). Those of the enslaved who died fighting were laid to rest in a separate tomb, as were warriors from Plataia (a small city-state to the north of Athens), who marched to Marathon in support of their Athenian friends.

For the first 15 or 16 kilometers of the race, the route heads south along the coast, toward the port town of Rafina. Low elevation, tree cover, and buildings all conspire to limit views from the road. At the 11km mark, just south of the town of Nea Makri, the ground rises a little and some vistas begin to break through. This photo captures a view of Mavrinoras, the easternmost and second-tallest peak of Mount Penteli, which stands at about 770m above sea level.

What you can’t see from this angle is the damage caused by wildfires this past summer on much of the rest of Penteli. These fires threatened a number of communities, including several quite close to the marathon route.

The view to the east from the Nea Makri area is dominated by the southern tip of Evia (ancient Euboia). The second largest island in Greece, it was home in antiquity to a couple of important city-states (Khalkis and Eritrea) that guarded their independence jealously until incorporated in various ways into the structure we know as the Athenian Empire. These days, it is home not only to some stunning scenery, but also to one of the most long-standing of Greece’s many new burgeoning microbreweries: Septem.

One of the charming aspects of the Athens Marathon is the excitement it generates among locals. At Marathon itself, a crowd gathered just outside the stadium to cheer on runners when the starting gun went off, many holding out their hands for high-fives. All along the route, people stood or sat in lawn chairs to cheer on participants with shouts of “bravo!” or “pah-meh, paithia!” (“Let’s go, kids!”—this was especially adorable when it was said by a 3-year-old girl). And, at the Tomb of the Athenians, a few residents were handing out olive branches to runners for luck.

This shot captures a group who sat on their rooftop for a least a couple of hours to support runners (and walkers) who passed by. It was not the warmest morning ever—it was just below 60 degrees when the race began, with a stiff breeze of about 20 mph, which is positively chilly by Greek standards—so we admire their dedication.

Just past the 18km marker, on the outskirts of the port town of Rafina, marathoners are greeted by Yannis Souvatzoglou’s 2017 sculpture, “The Three Runners”, which is flanked by three of the course’s original stone distance markers. Featuring three runners decorated in the colors of Olympic medals (gold, silver, and bronze), the sculpture grounds the race firmly in its modern, Olympic history.

“The Three Runners”, however, replaced an older brass statue created by Kosmas Tsolakos in 1997, which evoked a different history. Called “Nenikēkamen” (“we have conquered”), the older statue depicted the moment at which a messenger supposedly burst into the council house at Athens after running from Marathon in full armor to deliver news of the battle, shouted “nikōmen!” (“we are victorious!”) and promptly dropped dead of exhaustion. The version of this story familiar to most modern audiences stars a runner named Pheidippides, but ancient versions (none of which circulated earlier than about 150 years after the battle) associated it with different names (Thersippos, Eukles, and Philippides). The whole tradition, we suspect, is a later embellishment to the story of the battle at Marathon.

In 2016, someone managed to steal Tsolakos’ statue from its plinth in the middle of the night—quite a feat, given that the statue weighed about 500kg.

Look for more photos in part 2 of this set!