Home / Community & culture channel / News | Saturday 11 February 2012 |
2,500th (?) anniversary of Battle of Marathon |
Among those attending will be Greece's female marathon runner Maria Polyzou, who recently became the first woman to repeat the legendary 520-kilometre run from Athens to Sparta and back again in six days. The distance was originally run by the ancient messenger Pheidippides when he was sent to ask for Sparta's aid in the battle.
The 2,500th anniversary of the original 490 B.C. marathon run will be 2011, not 2010. It's the missing Year Zero again, but this time there's no controversy. Missing Year Zero may have spawned hopeless arguments on the definition of "new millennium," but it can't alter counting. There is no way to count the years between 490 B.C. and 2010 and come up with 2,500. (See the full count.)
Yet, newspaper editors from San Diego to Bangalore--including the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune--are one year off in their count as the anniversary approaches.
The miscount surfaced during the 2004 Athens Olympics, when the marathon followed the original route of the messenger (Phidippides or Pheidippides) after the Battle of Marathon. Some newspapers reported the first run as "2,494 years earlier." Internet searches at the time found no correct reports of 2,493 years.
