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Last November, I ran my first marathon, the “Athens Authentic”. I did it mainly because I wanted to follow in the footsteps of the world’s first marathon runner – the ancient Athenian messenger Pheidippides.

The story, as I knew it, went as follows. After their victory over a Persian invasion force at the border village of Marathon, the Athenians sent a messenger called Pheidippides to deliver the news to the city authorities. After running the 42 kilometres back to Athens, Pheidippides gasped “we’ve won!” (nenikēkamen) and promptly died of exhaustion.

It’s a great story, but was it true? The more I looked into it in the weeks leading up to the race, the less certain I was. Was I about to run 42km for a lie?

Different sources and different stories

Our best source for the events of 490 BC, the fifth-century historian Herodotus, doesn’t mention a messenger being sent from Marathon after the battle. He does say, though, that a runner called Pheidippides (or Philippides, in some manuscripts) was sent to Sparta to ask for help before the battle.

This trip is commemorated in the Spartathlon, a 246km event that I haven’t run – and never will.

Our next-oldest source is the fourth-century-BC intellectual Heraklides Pontikos. He apparently did mention a Marathon runner, but gave his name as Thersippos – at least according to the first-century-AD moralist Plutarch.

Plutarch himself is the earliest author to tell the story of a messenger from Marathon dying from exhaustion after proclaiming victory. But his messenger is called Eukles – and his dying word is nikōmen (we win).

The first time we hear this story with a messenger called Pheidippides (or Philippides) is in Lucian, and by that time we’re in the second century AD, around 600 years after the Battle of Marathon. The runner says nikōmen in that version too.

What to make of the different sources

Herodotus was closest in time to the events. And since he does tell the story of Pheidippides’ run to Sparta and back, he would surely have added in the story of the runner’s death if he had known about it.

But if Pheidippides didn’t run the first marathon, did someone else?

Our next candidate is Eukles, the name Plutarch tells us is given to the Marathon runner by the majority of historians. But here there’s an important detail: Eukles, according to Plutarch, ran from the battle “warm, with his weapons”.

If that’s right, Eukles would have run the first marathon after fighting for three hours or so in a desperate battle for his city’s survival. Not only that, but he would have done so bearing the traditional arms and armour of a Greek hoplite (heavy infantryman): spear, shield, helmet and (if he could afford it) breastplate. The whole panoply would have weighed ten or 20 kilograms, up to about one-third of the body weight of the average classical Greek.

Needless to say, this is something else I haven’t done.

Where does this leave Thersippos, the name given by Heraklides Pontikos?

It’s possible, as the Greek historian Christos Dionysopoulos has suggested, that there was a second runner, sent out the morning after the battle when the Athenians realised the Persians that they had pushed back onto their ships could simply use them to sail down the coast and attack Athens through its traditional harbour. That second runner may have been Thersippos.

But the strategic situation they were in was probably clear to the Athenians even as the battle ended. Someone would have to get to Athens before the Persians did, to reassure the populace that the Athenian army was still standing – and hence that there was no reason to surrender the city to the Persians.

They also needed to signal to any would-be defectors to the Persian side that it was the Athenians who were still calling the shots in Athens.

Eukles’ announcement of an Athenian victory – perhaps with his final breath – would have gone part of the way to achieving these goals.

But to really reassure people, and send a strong signal to potential “Medizers” (Persian sympathizers), the army would need to make an appearance in person. So, the Athenian hoplites, fresh from the most important battle of their lives, marched the 40km or so back to Athens, just in time to scare off the Persian fleet, which finally headed back to Persia.

Like Eukles, the Athenian hoplites would have had to bring along their weapons, both because these were valuable possessions and because they needed them to intimidate the Persians. Unlike Eukles, the Athenians probably didn’t run.

The British historian N.G.L. Hammond reckoned they could have walked the distance in six or seven hours – which is not that much longer than it took me to run it.

How long was it, really?

Speaking of the distance, what was it exactly?

I ran 42,195 metres, the standard length for a marathon, and I felt every metre afterwards. But if that was the distance that Eukles ran, why does the modern race make you run a 2km diversion around the burial monument of the Athenians?

The answer is because the modern marathon distance is only loosely based on the distance Eukles ran. The modern distance comes from the 1908 London Olympics, where competitors ran from Windsor Castle to White City Stadium, and then a bit further along the track to finish in front of the royal box.

The 1908 race was thus longer than the first Olympic marathon run in 1896. That course was 40km, the distance between the village of Marathon and the Panathenaic Stadium, where I finished my race.

The annual Athens “authentic” marathon didn’t begin until 1972. By that point 42,195 metres had long become the standard distance. That’s why I had the wonderful opportunity of running 2km extra around the tomb of the Athenians.

So, where did this all leave me as I trudged up the road from Marathon to Athens? (“Up”, by the way, is very much the right word.)

I wasn’t following in the footsteps of Pheidippides – thankfully, since his run to Sparta and back was much longer than the one I was doing. I might have been following in the footsteps of a man named Thersippos, but I was most likely retracing the steps of one called Eukles, albeit without carrying one-third of my body weight in armour.

But something else occurred to me as I eventually slowed to a walk for part of the course. I may have been doing so because I was tired, but I was also making my journey more similar to that of the Athenian hoplites in 490 BC. They walked briskly, after defeating an absolutist invasion force that was seeking to crush their nascent democracy.

Some 2,500 years later, I run-walked slowly over the same ground, unarmed and without a worry on my mind except the next research deadline. And that was good enough for me.

What makes a good leader?

This question confronts us at every election and with every domestic and international policy decision. As a professor of classical languages and literature for more than 30 years, I marvel at our insistence on addressing this question as if it were brand new.

Centuries ago, myths helped the Greeks learn to reject tyrannical authority and identify the qualities of good leadership. As I write in my book “Enraged,” the same myths that long predate the world’s very first democracy have lessons for us today – just as they did for the ancient Greeks centuries ago.

Respect and reciprocity

Long before the Athenians first instituted their radical direct democracy in 508 B.C., Homer’s “Odyssey” began to teach the ancient Greeks to recognize good leadership when they saw it and to despise the alternative. Until the late sixth century B.C., the autocratic rule of warlords, kings and tyrants was all that anyone had ever seen. The “Odyssey,” transmitted orally over centuries before ever being written down, powerfully shaped ancient Greek ideas about what constitutes good leadership. It is one of the two earliest surviving texts of Western civilization and identifies two crucial elements of good leadership: respect and reciprocity.

The “Odyssey” starts by emphasizing that greedy, unrestrained, irresponsible leadership makes communal life intolerable for everyone. By contrast a good leader respects his obligations to his people, and ensures that they respect theirs to him and to one another. This produces order, harmony and happiness for everyone – powerful and weak alike.

As the story begins, the protagonist, Greek warrior Odysseus, has been shipwrecked on his way home after the Greeks conquered Troy. Odysseus is marooned on an island in the middle of nowhere. His absence has permitted powerful young men in his community to take over his household. They are slaughtering and eating all of his cattle, drinking up all of his wine and mistreating his servants and family. Each of these men seeks to marry Odysseus’s wife, but she’s stalling for time. Neither she, nor her son, nor anyone in the community can rein in these gluttonous, unrestrained, destructive young men – least of all the young men themselves.

The narrator and the characters, including the suitors themselves, refer to these young men as the “best” men in the community, but neither the audience nor anyone within the story can consider them good leaders. They hold all power in the community; no one else has any authority over them. But the narrator reveals that their behavior is both destructive and self-defeating. They verbally abuse Odysseus’s wife and son, and violate all decent norms of behavior toward guests, servants and others in the community.

Athena, goddess of wisdom, observes that “any wise man who came among them would be displeased and ashamed seeing their many shameful deeds.”

Odysseus’s son, speaking to community elders about the suitors, insists that “unendurable deeds have been done, and ignobly my household has been destroyed. Even you yourselves must be indignant and ashamed before other men in neighboring communities.”

The suitors are having a grand time ravaging Odysseus’s household, forcing Odysseus’s maidservants to have sex with them and eating and drinking themselves into a stupor. But the narrator tells us that the suitors are bringing destruction on themselves.

By contrast, Odysseus is described as a wise and good leader. The great god Zeus identifies him as “excelling all mortals in his intellect.” Many characters, including one of Odysseus’s former companions and the goddess Athena, recall that Odysseus was “gentle and kind, like a father.”

Odysseus presided over a happy, thriving community. He respected his obligations to those under his rule, earning the affection and loyalty of his family, servants and subjects. Despite his nearly 20-year absence, his family, friends and many servants remain loyal. Everyone longs for Odysseus’s return.

Seeking news of his father, Odysseus’s son visits two other communities, each ruled by a compassionate, benevolent king. Each king respects his obligations to the gods and to his people. Each provides feasts and celebrations including music, dancing and storytelling. Each entertains guests graciously and generously. The people, in turn, respect their obligations to their king, the gods, one another and guests. Everyone lives happily, fully and harmoniously.

In these examples of communal life among mortals, the “Odyssey” suggests that the quality of life in a human community depends on the quality of its leaders. Greedy, violent, unrestrained leaders like the suitors create chaos and misery. Good, responsible, admirable leaders like Odysseus promote mutual respect, harmony and happiness for all.

Muscular, bearded and trident-wielding, Jason Momoa’s portrayal of the titular Aquaman in the forthcoming DC film draws on ancient Greek and Roman iconography.

Water gods in Greek mythology are a diverse group. There are human-looking gods such as Poseidon, god of the sea, or Tethys: goddess of freshwater, rainfall, and nurse to the Olympians. Others, such as Tethys’ husband Oceanus, who represents the primordial ocean surrounding the world, are depicted as both human, and/or part-human combined with a fish or serpent.

Ruling Atlantis is a key role associated with sea gods. First mentioned in Plato’s The Republic, Atlantis was the Poseidon-worshipping city state held to be a pinnacle of ethics. According to Plato, Atlantis sunk into the ocean after it lost the favour of the gods due to the inhabitants’ hubris.

While Aquaman is strictly speaking a superhero rather than a sea god, his appearance and powers in the upcoming movie certainly draw on those of maritime divinities.

Aquaman’s abilities to communicate with sea life, control the ocean and swim at superhuman speeds all resemble traits associated with Poseidon. Poseidon is well attested to communicating with (and even creating) sea creatures, and the nereids and oceanids – nymphs of the ocean – by which he is surrounded. In Homer’s Odyssey, Poseidon is a capricious, dangerous deity who delays Odysseus’ return home by ten years.

In DC’s original comics, Aquaman, who first appeared in 1941, was most typically an outcast of the Atlantean cities. Depending on the version, Aquaman (also known as Arthur Curry) either grew up on land or was abandoned to die there, as he needed to be in contact with water every hour.

In other comics from the 1950s, Aquaman was depicted as the half-Atlantean son of Queen Atlanna, although in later versions he is depicted as fully Atlantean. A warrior king, he defended Atlantean cities, (and more broadly, the ocean and surface world as a member of the Justice League), from a variety of super-villains, as well as contemporary threats such as pirates and Nazi U-boats.

He does this through masterful skill in melee combat and, as the comics progress, through increasingly supernatural powers (such the ability to create water and dehydrate people).

The student of Greek mythology is often struck by the fact that some gods and goddesses have extensive roles in the mythical narratives, and others have very limited parts to play. The goddess Demeter is an interesting case of this. As an Olympian goddess and fertility figure, she is very important in ancient Greek religion and life, but she has a rather small role in its literature and mythology.

She is mentioned a little bit in Homeric epic, especially the Iliad, but has no actual part to play either in the Iliad or the Odyssey. Nor does she feature at all as a character in extant Greek drama.

There is, however, a rather beautiful poem called the “Homeric Hymn to Demeter” in which Demeter and her daughter Persephone are the central focus of attention. It probably dates to the first half of the 6th century BC. It is 495 lines long and composed in hexameters, the same poetic metre as the Iliad and Odyssey. Despite its connections to epic poetry, however, and the title “Homeric”, the hymn is of uncertain authorship.

A mother’s love

The focus of the poem is one of the most renowned narratives from Greek mythology – the rape of Persephone by Hades, the god of the Underworld, and the response of Demeter to her loss. It is a remarkable narrative, built fundamentally on the power of a mother’s love for her only child.

The ancient Greek word for “mother” [meter] is actually embedded in Demeter’s name. The Hymn describes the primordial maternal power brought to bear upon the male sky-god Zeus, who had secretly (ie without Demeter’s knowledge) given over his daughter Persephone to a marriage with his brother Hades.

Demeter is one of the “older” generation of Olympian gods. Her siblings are Zeus, Poseidon and Hades on the male side, and Hera and Hestia on the female side. Zeus, the sky god, has sexual relations with two of his sisters – Hera, who is a kind of long-suffering queen of heaven; and Demeter, who is more earth-focused. In a famous passage in Iliad 14, Zeus recounts to Hera herself some of his sexual exploits, and he names Demeter in his long list of amours.

Persephone is not mentioned in the passage as the product of this particular sexual encounter, but that is definitely the idea. Demeter and Persephone are often thought of together as “The Two Goddesses”. This name helps to emphasise the power of their bond, and the gravity of Zeus’s action in violently separating them.

The Hymn tells the story of Persephone and other young girls gathering flowers in a meadow. As she bends down to pick a beautiful flower, the earth opens up and Hades emerges on his horse-drawn chariot. She gives out a scream, but he carries her off into the depths of the earth.

Most of us take big and small risks in our lives every day. But COVID-19 has made us more aware of how we think about taking risks.

Since the start of the pandemic, people have been forced to weigh their options about how much risk is worth taking for ordinary activities – should they, for example, go to the grocery store or even turn up for a long-scheduled doctor’s visit?

As a scholar of ancient Greek history, I am interested in what the classics can teach us about risk-taking as a way to make sense of our current situation.

Greek mythology features godlike heroes, but Greek history was filled with men and women who were exposed to great risks without the comforts of modern life.

The iron generation

One of the earliest written works in Greek is “Works and Days,” a poem by a farmer named Hesiod in the eighth century B.C. In it, Hesiod addresses his lazy brother, Perses.

The most famous section of “Works and Days” describes a cycle of generations. First, Hesiod says, Zeus created a golden generation who “lived like the gods, having hearts free from sorrow, far from work and misery.”

Then came a silver generation, arrogant and proud.

Third was a bronze generation, violent and self-destructive.

Fourth was the age of heroes who went to their graves at Troy.

Finally, Hesiod says, Zeus made an iron generation marked by a balance of pain and joy.

While the earliest generations lived life free of worries, according to Hesiod, life in the current iron generation is shaped by risk, which leads to pain and sorrow.

Throughout the poem, Hesiod develops an idea of risk and its management that was common in ancient Greece: People can and should take steps to prepare for risk, but it is ultimately inescapable.

As Hesiod says, “summer won’t last forever, build granaries,” but for people of the current generation, “there is neither a stop to toil and sorrow by day, nor to death by night.”

In other words, people face the consequences of risk – including suffering – because that is the will of Zeus.

Omens and divination

If the outcome of risk was determined by the gods, then one critical part of preparing to face uncertainty was to try to find out the will of Zeus. For this, the Greeks relied on oracles and omens.

While the rich might pay to petition the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, most people turned to simpler techniques to seek guidance from the gods, such as throwing dice made of animal knuckle bones.

A second technique involved inscribing a question on a lead tablet, to which the god would provide an answer such as “yes” or “no.” These tablets record a wide range of concerns from ordinary Greeks. In one, a man named Lysias asks the god whether he should invest in shipping. In another, a man named Epilytos asks whether he should continue in his current career and whether he ought to wed a woman who shows up, or wait. Nothing is known about either man except that they turned to the gods when confronted with uncertainty.

Omens were also used to inform almost every decision, whether public or private. Men called “chresmologoi,” oracle collectors who interpreted the signs from the gods, had enormous influence in Athens. When the Spartans invaded in 431 B.C., the historian Thucydides says, they were everywhere reciting oracular responses. When plague struck Athens, he notes that the Athenians called to mind just such a prophecy.

Chresmologoi played so much of a role in bolstering public confidence that the wealthy Athenian politician Alcibiades privately contracted them as spin doctors in order to persuade people to overlook the risks of an expedition to Sicily in 415 B.C.

Mitigating risks

For the Greeks, putting faith in the gods alone did not fully protect them from risk. As Hesiod explained, risk mitigation required attending to both the gods and human actions.

Generals, for example, made sacrifices to gods like Artemis or Ares in advance of battle, and the best commanders knew how to interpret every omen as a positive sign. At the same time, though, generals also paid attention to strategy and tactics in order to give their armies every advantage.

Neither was every omen heeded. Before the Athenian expedition to Sicily in 415 B.C., statues sacred to Hermes, the god of travel, were found with their faces scratched out.

The Athenians interpreted this as a bad omen, which may have been what the perpetrators intended. The expedition sailed anyway, but it ended in a crushing defeat. Few of the people who left ever returned to Athens.

The evidence was clear to the Athenians: The desecration of the statues had put everyone in the expedition at risk. The only solution was to punish the wrongdoers. Fifteen years later, the orator Andocides had to defend himself in court against accusations that he had been involved.

This history explains that individuals might escape divine punishment, but ignoring omens and failing to take precautions were often communal rather than individual problems. Andocides was acquitted, but his trial shows that when someone’s actions put everyone at risk, it was a community’s responsibility to hold them accountable.

Oracles and knuckle bones are not in vogue today, but the ancient Greeks show us the very real dangers of risky behavior, and why it is important that risk not be left to a simple toss of the dice.

Mermaids – underwater creatures that are half fish and half human – do not exist except in people’s imaginations. Scientists who study the ocean for the United States have investigated their possible existence and say no evidence of mermaids has ever been found.

You might wonder why government scientists looked into this question. There are many stories about mermaids on TV, the internet and in magazines that pretend to be real science news. They try to fool people into believing mermaids are real, without any true evidence. This is called “cryptoscience” or “cryptozoology,” but it’s not real science. Don’t let intriguing stories deceive you about mermaids and other fun but made-up creatures, like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster.

But just because mermaids are not real does not mean they are not meaningful. Mermaids, or merfolk as they are sometimes called because not all of them are female, have a long history and are known all over the world – the same way dragons, fairies and unicorns are.

More than one kind of mermaid

Some of the earliest mermaid stories are part of ancient Greek mythology from over 3,000 years ago. The Greeks imagined lots of creatures that were part human and part animal, like harpies (bird and human) and centaurs (horse and human).

Sometimes their mermaids were good, like the Greek goddess Atargatis, who protected humans, but others were dangerous, like the Sirens, who sang beautiful songs that made sailors crash their ships into rocks and sink. Irish mermaids, called “merrows,” which date back 1,000 years, were also considered a sign of bad luck.

Mermaid bodies have been imagined differently in different places. There’s a legendary Japanese mermaid called a “ningyo,” which is mostly a fish, but has a human face. Maybe you’ve seen the animated film “Ponyo,” about a goldfish with a little girl’s face? In Europe, there were mermaids called “melusines” who had two fish tails.

Stories about mermaids also varied depending on where and when they were told. Only some are about mermaids falling in love and wanting to be human, like Ariel and Ponyo. In the storybook “Mermaids From Mars,” for instance, mermaids have used up all the water on Mars and come to Earth to help people learn the lesson of water conservation.

In a lot of places, mermaids were used as symbols of power and wealth. For example, the city of Warsaw in Poland has a legend of a mermaid who is considered to be the protector of the city. There’s a huge statue of her there, and she is even featured on the city’s coat of arms. Many castles in Europe also have mermaid symbols to demonstrate royal power and wealth – even in countries with no oceans, like Austria.

Why mermaids?

You may wonder how mermaids came to be. Why did so many people around the world imagine them throughout history? It’s an interesting question that probably has more than one answer.

Superstitious sailors, including Christopher Columbus and others, reported seeing mermaids on their travels, but scientists and historians think they probably saw real animals, like manatees or seals.

Throughout time, people have often created stories to help explain all kinds of things they couldn’t understand at the time. Stories also help people understand their own dreams, desires and fears.

Whatever the reasons, people still clearly love mermaids. You can buy mermaid dolls, coloring books and costumes. You can find them on flags, coins and Starbucks coffee. At some aquariums and water parks, real people perform as mermaids and have to practice holding their breath and keeping their eyes open underwater for a long time. There’s even a brand of cotton candy called “Mermaid Farts,” which is described as “sweet and fluffy!”

Even though mermaids are not really real, they can feed your imagination and creativity. Mermaids are also important because they are a shared idea that has linked people together around the world for a very long time.