There are two main accoints of the story and, ironically, he didn’t actually manage anything useful in either of them
In the oldest one, he was sent from Athens to Sparta to ask for help against the invadng Persians. He ran 240 km in two days in this version of the story, only for the Spartans to say that actually they were busy with a religious festival and would not be coming to help. He then ran back. In this one he runs more than ten marathons in a matter of days and doesn’t die, and while the Spartans didn’t help someone did have to go ask to find that out
In the later one, he ran the 40 km from the battle of Marathon back to Athens to say “we won” and then die. Of course, there’s not really any strategic decisions required from the information of “we won”, so in this version he ran himself to death for basically no reason at all
The “we won” message was important because the Persians retreated with their navy mostly intact, and they suspected they would show up in Athens and pretend they won to get concessions from the city.
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There are two main accoints of the story and, ironically, he didn’t actually manage anything useful in either of them
In the oldest one, he was sent from Athens to Sparta to ask for help against the invadng Persians. He ran 240 km in two days in this version of the story, only for the Spartans to say that actually they were busy with a religious festival and would not be coming to help. He then ran back. In this one he runs more than ten marathons in a matter of days and doesn’t die, and while the Spartans didn’t help someone did have to go ask to find that out
In the later one, he ran the 40 km from the battle of Marathon back to Athens to say “we won” and then die. Of course, there’s not really any strategic decisions required from the information of “we won”, so in this version he ran himself to death for basically no reason at all
The “we won” message was important because the Persians retreated with their navy mostly intact, and they suspected they would show up in Athens and pretend they won to get concessions from the city.
Well damn - I liked my version better where he was just really in a hurry to get the party started!
So the guy was hiding for two days behind a hill, then came out and said “I totally just run 240km and they said they not coming, sorry guys”.