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Browning and The Marathon Race

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

John W. Cunliffe
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Extract

The Marathon race was undoubtedly a happy thought on the part of the promoters of the first Olympic games of modern times—those held at Athens in 1896. A well-known member of the French Academy, M. Michel Bréal, gave the prize, and the Greeks set their hearts on winning it. A private correspondent wrote from Athens just before the race took place:—

If the winner is Greek, a tailor has promised him a suit of clothes, a barber has undertaken to shave him for life, a man at a has promised him two cups of coffee daily for life, another has promised a dinner a day for a year, another has undertaken to do his washing for life, and another to keep his things ironed, and last, but not least, a lady has offered to marry him.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , 1909 , pp. 154 - 163
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1909

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References

page 154 note 1 London Weekly Times, 1896, p. 309.

page 155 note 1 Bk. vi, Ch. 105-6. Rawlinson's Translation.

page 158 note 1 “ In general the Athenian ladies—indeed, the Greek ladies without exception—were not even asked to give their consent to the match prepared for them. Parents managed marriages often on both sides, always on that of the woman. The husband was often a complete stranger until the day of the espousals. (See the plays of Plautus and Terence passim, and cf. Eurip. Androm., 951, and Xen. Œconom., vii, § 10-11.) ”—Rawlinson, v. 3, p. 417, note 7.

page 160 note 1 Pausanias, Description of Greece, Bk. vm, Ch. 54. Notes by J. G. Frazer, v. 4, pp. 445-7.

page 160 note 2 “Mr. Grote believes that this was no pretence, but the ‘blind tenacity of ancient habit’ (Hist. of Greece, iv, p. 460). We find such a feeling, he says, to abate, but never to disappear in the Spartan history; and he refers to the hesitation shown before the battle of Platæa (infra, ix, 7-10) as indicating the reality of this motive; but both that and the similar withholding of the bulk of their troops from Thermopylae (vii, 206) may be explained on selfish grounds, and fail to show that the excuse was more than a subterfuge. I know but of one occasion in Spartan history where their own interests were plainly attacked, in which a religious motive is said to have had any share in preventing their troops from stirring. In the seventh year of the Peloponnesian war, at the first seizure of Pylos, the occurrence of a festival appears as one out of many reasons of their delay in making a resistance (Thucyd., iv, 5); but it is expressly stated that they made light of the occasion, and thought no hurry was needed.”—Rawlinson, v. 3, p. 405, note 9.

page 161 note 1 “The distance from Athens to Sparta by the road is given by Isocrates (Orat. Paneg., 24, p. 171) at 1200 stades, by Pliny (H. N., vii, 20, p. 425), more accurately, at 1140. Moderns estimate the direct distance at 135 or 140 miles. Pheidippides must therefore have travelled at the rate of 70 English miles a day. Kinneir says that this is a rate attained by the modern Persian footmessengers (Geograph. Memoir, p. 44, but see above, vol. i, p. 161, note 4); and Pliny relates that two persons, Anystis, a Lacedaemonian, and Philonides, a courier employed by Alexander the Great, performed the extraordinary distance of 1200 stades (nearly 140 miles) in a single day (H. N., 1, s. c.).”—Rawlinson, v. 3, p. 405, note 6.

page 162 note 1 See Hauvette, Herodote, p. 261; Macon, v. 2, p. 155; Rawlinson, v. 3, p. 416.

page 162 note 2 But perhaps means simply “ hot from the battle.” Lucian, however, in a passage occurring a little later than that quoted above, also suggests that the runner was covered with blood.

page 163 note 1 “It was the favorite boast of Athens that her inhabitants were —sprung from the soil. Hence the adoption of the symbol of the grasshopper (Thucyd., i, 6; Aristoph. Eq., 1231; Nub., 955, ed. Bothe). Her territory had never been overrun by an enemy, and so her cities had never been overthrown or removed, like the cities in other countries (compare Herod., i, 56, vii, 171; Thucyd., i, 2; Plat. Tim., p. 10, ed. Tauchn.; Menex., pp. 186, 198; Isocrat. Paneg., § 4, p. 166).”—Rawlinson, v, 3, p. 405, note 7. I quote this and other notes from Rawlinson because this was the established edition at the time Browning wrote Pheidippides, and very likely to be consulted by him.