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Marathon   /mˈɛrəθˌɑn/   Listen
Marathon

noun
1.
Any long and arduous undertaking.  Synonym: endurance contest.
2.
A footrace of 26 miles 385 yards.
3.
A battle in 490 BC in which the Athenians and their allies defeated the Persians.  Synonym: battle of Marathon.



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"Marathon" Quotes from Famous Books



... Athenian Empire, and to warn the Spartans against plunging the whole country into the horrors of civil war. Leave being granted, the Athenian orator entered on his subject by sketching the course of events for the last sixty years. Athens, he said, had twice saved Greece, first at Marathon, and afterwards at Salamis. On the first of these occasions she had stood almost alone against an overwhelming force of Persians; and ten years later, though betrayed by her allies, she had borne the brunt against the navy of Xerxes. Who, then, was worthier than she to hold empire ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell

... the men as they come in is sufficient proof of the terrific nature of the test. So bathed in perspiration are they that they might have been running a "Marathon" race in the height of summer; and so parched are their tongues that they can scarcely speak. Lucky the skier who, during his run, chances on an unfrozen forest pool whereat he may quench his thirst by deep draughts of what the Norwegian terms ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman

... hear the last words of each sentence of a sermon growing faint, like Marathon runners staggering feebly towards the goal, and the final word dropping completely under, that sermon, no matter how beautiful its conception or eloquent its composition, is ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan

... "This here Marathon race business through three-foot snow ain't for invalids like me and Husky," one of them said cheerfully, with his mouth full of sandwich. "We're also rans, and don't even ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine

... Our men were ranged in lines of seventeen deep Before the gates, and never left their posts there, even to sleep. Shall I not smite the rash presumption then of foes like these, Detested both of all the gods and of Euripides— Else, may the Marathon-plain not boast ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes

... friends, be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson

... Benz, throwing a shoe the length of the locker room, "Talk about marathon races! I'll bet I ran ten or twenty miles up and down the field ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman

... Scotland's martyrs were immolated at the doors of their own huts, the foundation of which may still be traced, overgrown with the green turf or the heather-bell. To a Scottish pastor such scenes are classic, grand even in a higher sense than those of Marathon or Thermopylae—for it was the immutable and holy spirit which was there kindled, and formed into a flame, that finally won for Scotland not only the blessings of civil liberty, but the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... the world, The Spirit of God with might unfurled The flag of Freedom over Chaos, And all its banded anarchs fled, Like vultures frighted from Imaus, 50 Before an earthquake's tread.— So from Time's tempestuous dawn Freedom's splendour burst and shone:— Thermopylae and Marathon Caught like mountains beacon-lighted, 55 The springing Fire.—The winged glory On Philippi half-alighted, Like an eagle on a promontory. Its unwearied wings could fan The quenchless ashes of Milan. 60 From age to age, from man to man, It lived; and lit from land ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... modern history are mixed up it's hard to do any clear thinking. And when you do get a clear thought you find out that it isn't true. You know Dr. Johnson said something to the effect that that man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose feelings would not grow warmer among the ruins of Rome. Marathon is a simple proposition. But when one is asked to warm his enthusiasm by means of the Roman monuments, he naturally asks, 'Enthusiasm over what?' Of course, I don't mean ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers

... years), and was honored almost before all others in the land. A sound mind in a sound body was the motto of the day. To excel in feats of strength and dexterity was an accomplishment that even a philosopher need not scorn. It will be recalled that aeschylus distinguished himself at the battle of Marathon; that Thucydides, the greatest of Greek historians, was a general in the Peloponnesian War; that Xenophon, the pupil and biographer of Socrates, was chiefly famed for having led the Ten Thousand in the memorable campaign of Cyrus ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... conceptions that Persia dreamed of conquering the West. At Marathon and at Salamis that illusion was looted. History tells of the cohorts that descended there. It relates further what they did. But of what they thought there is no record. It was, perhaps, too obvious. Ormuzd, god of light and, in the Orient, god of the day, was, in the darker and duller Occident, ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus

... may take its place by the side of the myth of Mucius Scaevola, or the real exploit of that brother of the poet AEschylus, who, when the Persians were flying from Marathon, clung to a ship till both his hands were hewn away, and then seized it with his teeth, leaving his name as a portent even in the splendid calendar of Athenian heroes. Captain Bethune, without call or need, making his notes, merely, as he ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... old boy, an' Marathon, an' all that kind o' thing! How many miles in a day could a Greek run in ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... gain, not only being vexed if they get ahead of us, but also carefully observing all the steps by which they get ahead, and trying to outdo them in industry, and hard work, and soberness, and prudence; as Themistocles said Miltiades' victory at Marathon would not let him sleep.[536] For he who thinks his enemy gets before him in offices, or advocacies, or state affairs, or in favour with his friends or great men, if from action and emulation he sinks into envy and despondency, makes his life become ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... been pondering over the awful and yet tender beauty of the maiden figures from the Parthenon and its kindred temples. And these, or such as these, I thought to myself, were the sisters of the men who fought at Marathon and Salamis; the mothers of many a man among the ten thousand whom Xenophon led back from Babylon to the Black Sea shore; the ancestresses of many a man who conquered the East in Alexander's host, and fought with Porus in the far Punjab. And were these women ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... as a pekin. Caesar gets up from writing his Latin Grammar to conquer Gaul, change the course of history, and make so many things possible,—among the rest our English language and Shakespeare. Horace had been a colonel; and from AEschylus, who fought at Marathon, to Ben Jonson, who trailed a pike in the Low Countries, the list of martial civilians is a long one. A man's education seems more complete who has smelt hostile powder from a less aesthetic distance than Goethe. It raises our confidence in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... of Prometheus, as already mentioned; the death of the two brothers, the Cercopes, famous robbers; the defeat of the Bull of Marathon; the death of Lygis, who disputed the passage of the Alps with him; that of the giant Alcyaneus, who hurled at him a stone so vast that it crushed twenty-four men to death; that of Eryx, king of Sicily, whom he killed with a blow of the cestus, for refusing ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... vast power that adequate stimulation of these regions possesses in causing the discharge of energy, let him be bound hand and foot and vigorously tickled for an hour. What would happen? He would be as completely exhausted as though he had experienced a major surgical operation or had run a Marathon race. ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile

... Greeks, at that period, were the noblest race of the ancient world—immortal for genius and art. But power dazzled them, and little remained of that glorious spirit which was seen at Thermopylae and Marathon. The Greek ascendency in Asia and Egypt was followed by the same luxury and extravagance and effeminacy that resulted from the rule of Persia. The Greeks had done great things, and contributed to the march of civilization, but they ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... Besides stones, plummets of lead, called 'glandes,' (as in the present instance), and molubdides, of a form between acorns and almonds, were cast in moulds, to be thrown from slings. They have been frequently dug up in various parts of Greece, and particularly on the plains of Marathon. Some have the device of a thunderbolt; while others are inscribed with dexai, 'take this.' It was a prevalent idea with the ancients that the stone discharged from the sling became red hot in its course, from ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... intellect; he was most open to its appeal where it presented divinity stretching forth a helping hand to man. The noble "idyl" of Echetlos is thus a counterpart, in its brief way, to the great tragic tale of Herakles and Alkestis. Echetlos, the mysterious ploughman who shone amid the ranks at Marathon, ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... "Good little Marathon, wasn't it?" he called from the road. "Did you hear me yelling like an Indian? I chased them as far as the boundary line, and when I saw them they were still running. Gee, Mr. Gordon, I mean Uncle Dick, you got back from the oil fields ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson

... unaccountable sounds which startle travellers in lonely spots, were attributed to Pan, who possessed a frightful and most discordant voice; hence the term panic terror, to indicate sudden fear. The Athenians ascribed their victory at Marathon to the alarm which he created among the Persians by his ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... there could be no monotony, no exhaustibleness, in the scenes required to be thus portrayed. Even if there were, and you wanted for every school in the kingdom, one death of Leonidas; one battle of Marathon; one death of Cleobis and Bito; there need not therefore be more monotony in your art than there was in the repetition of a given cycle of subjects by the religious painters of Italy. But we ought not to ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin

... that it wouldn't interfere with your work in the five mile run, I'd be tempted to let you go into it," the track captain declared; "but you know that short Marathon has been thought so important that it was given three points, to one for all other events. We've just got to win that, or we're gone. Do you really and truly think ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... "I'm leading in the Marathon race. The conditions are fearful. Competitors are required not only to walk, but at the same time to propel a bicycle, the hind tire of which must be deflated. You're only allowed five falls, and I've ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... immediately felt he had nothing to dread. He might have been a Marathon athlete, so far as any hint to the contrary went. Ted appeared never to notice his disability or to be conscious of any difference in their physical equipment; and when, as sometimes happened, he ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett

... ruled the conquered countries by satraps and royal governors, it assimilated the Greeks with Asiatics, and modified the forms of social life; it brought Asia and Europe together, and produced a rivalry which finally ended in the battle of Marathon and the subsequent Asiatic victories of Alexander. While the conquests of the Persians introduced Oriental ideas and customs into Greece, the wars of Alexander extended the Grecian sway in Asia. The civilized world opened toward the East; but with the extension of Greek ideas and art, there ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord

... about Mt. Washington and the hotel on its top, he did know that Edith was a bright, observant girl who liked a touch of the ideal, so he asked, "Do you know about the Marathon ...
— Rafael in Italy - A Geographical Reader • Etta Blaisdell McDonald

... of the poet AEschylos. When the Persians, after the battle of Marathon, were pushing off from shore, Cyngaeiros seized one of their ships with his right hand, which being lopped off, he grasped it with his left hand; this being cut off, he seized it with his teeth, and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... was the naval contingents from Phoenicia which crushed the Ionian revolt. The expedition of Mardonius, and still more that of Datis and Artaphernes, had indicated the danger threatening Greece when the master of a great army was likewise the master of a great navy. Their defeat at Marathon was not likely to, and as a matter of fact did not, discourage the Persians from further attempts at aggression. As the advance of Cambyses into Egypt had been flanked by a fleet, so also was that of Xerxes into Greece. By the good ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge

... of Datis and Artaphernes: the taking of Eretria, the battle of Marathon (490)—The revolt of Egypt under Khabbisha; the death of Darius and the accession of Xerxes I.—The revolt of Babylon under Shamasherib—The invasion of Greece: Artemision, Thermopylae, the taking of Athens, Salamis—Platsae and the final retreat of the Persians: Mycale—The war carried ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... she spake the trump was heard That echoed ominous o'er the streets of Rome, When the first Caesar totter'd o'er the grave By Freedom delv'd: the Trump, whose chilling blast 270 On Marathon and on Plataea's plain Scatter'd the Persian.—From his ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... same form of government for more than four hundred years, reckoning to the end of the late war, and has thus been in a position to arrange the affairs of the other states. Not many years after the deposition of the tyrants, the battle of Marathon was fought between the Medes and the Athenians. Ten years afterwards, the barbarian returned with the armada for the subjugation of Hellas. In the face of this great danger, the command of the confederate Hellenes was assumed ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides

... And Marathon looks on the sea; And musing there an hour alone, I dream'd that Greece might still be free; For standing on the Persians' grave, I could not ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... about Marathon, But what is Marathon to me? Tell me of fights still going on, Men "rightly struggling to be free;" Nay, I find interest much more brave in The mill 'twixt Thingummy ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various

... p. 47) has produced a Greek epigram of six lines on this victory of Narses, which a favorably compared to the battles of Marathon and Plataea. The chief difference is indeed in their consequences—so trivial in the former instance—so permanent and glorious in the latter. Note: Not in the epigram, but ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... the very pattern of a modern Major-Gineral, I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral; I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical, From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical; I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical, I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical; About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot o' news, With ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... for some time in this prophetic strain, the bishop listening with considerable approbation though, at a certain point of the discourse, he would have liked to drop a word about Thermopylae and Marathon. He also knew something of the evils of Northern industrialism—how it stunts the body and ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... a post-graduate course at the school when the subject of Marathon running came up. A race is arranged, and Fred shows both his friends and his enemies what he can do. An athletic story of ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... anywhere near Greece at all! We had good reasons for this dislike. There were dad and Captain Buncombe—who was what people call an archaeologist, fond of grubbing up old stones and skeletons, and digging like an old mole amongst ruins—continually talking all day long about Marathon and Hymettus, the Parthenon and Chersonese, the Acropolis, and Theseus and Odysseus and all the rest of them, bothering our lives out with questions about Homer and the Iliad, and all such stuff; so, I put it to you candidly, whether it wasn't almost as bad as being back again at school, ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson

... Poppins; that the store had a slick new brand of Manila cigars, kept in a swell new humidor bought upon the advice of himself (Mr. Poppins); that one of the young clerks in the store had done fine in the Modified Marathon; that the Cubs had had a great team this year; that he'd be glad to give Mr.—Mr. Wrenn, eh?—one of those Manila cigars—great cigars they were, too; and that he hadn't "laughed so much for a month of Sundays as he had over ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis

... in which probably the actors are always at the time quite unconscious of their perennial significance, and yet which become landmarks in the evolution of the human spirit. Such are Thermopylae and Marathon and Bunker Hill. Such was that first convention at Seneca Falls.... The light from that meeting, springing from a vital source, has vitalized every point it has touched. Other torches lit by that have become beacon lights, and every ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... gorfod Tra'n creigiau a'n bylchau'n bod; Cariwn mewn cof trwy'r cweryl, Y'mhob bwlch, am Thermopyl; Gwnawn weunydd a llwynydd llon, Mawr hwythau, fel Marathon; Yn benaf llefwn beunydd,— ...
— Gwaith Alun • Alun

... him coming through the woods on the dead run. We all stopped working and laughed, because he was coming along like a marathon runner. All except Skinny-he went right on chopping away and the sapling looked as if a cow had been ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... to judge him fairly we must look at the problem from his side and postulate that Socialism (whether he interpreted its theories aright or not) did pursue practical ideals. If Aeschylus was more proud of fighting at Marathon than of writing tragedies—if Socrates claimed respect as much for his firmness as a juryman as for his philosophic method—surely Morris might believe that his duty to his countrymen called him to leave his study ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... knew it was going to be a tough job, so I took a good rest—an hour, I should think. And then I started to walk back. I found that I had come a devil of a way—I must have gone at Marathon pace. I walked and walked, and at last I got into Paris, and found myself with still a couple of miles to go. It was all right now; I should soon find a cab. But the luck was dead against me. I heard a man come round ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson

... (so-called) ad infinitum and ad nauseam. "Greece," cries one of the foremost of our orators, "had her republics, but they were the republics of one freeman and ten slaves; and the battle of Marathon was fought by slaves unchained from the doorposts of their master's houses. Italy had her republics; they were the republics of wealth and skill and family, limited and aristocratic. Holland had her republic, the republic ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various

... sake, fit rather to have been sung than said, and to have proclaimed to all true English hearts, not as a novel but as an epic (which some man may yet gird himself to write), the same great message which the songs of Troy, and the Persian wars, and the trophies of Marathon and Salamis, spoke to the hearts of all ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... conducted by Persia in the three expeditions against Greece, first in 490 B.C. under Darius, and defeated by the Athenians under Miltiades at Marathon; the second, 480 B.C., under Xerxes, opposed by Leonidas and his 300 Spartans at Thermopylae and defeated by the Athenians under Themistocles at Salamis by sea; and the third, in 479 B.C., under Xerxes, by the Greeks under ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... for three declamations. He built at Athens a stadium six hundred feet long, entirely of white marble, and capable of admitting the whole population. His theatre, erected to the memory of his wife, was made of cedar wood curiously carved. He had two villas, one at Marathon, the place of his birth, about ten miles from Athens, the other at Cephissia, at the distance of six; and thither he drew to him the elite, and at times the whole body of the students. Long arcades, groves of trees, clear pools for the bath, delighted and recruited ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... eggs, the bellies of hens with their soft eggs flavoured with a rich juice, and minced meats highly spiced. When this cook is entreated to explain his secret art, he solemnly swears by the manes of those who braved all the dangers of the plain of Marathon, and combated at sea at Salamis, that he will not reveal the secret that year. But of an incident so triumphant in the annals of the gastric art, our philosopher would not deprive posterity of the knowledge. The animal had been bled to death by a wound under the shoulder, whence, after a ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... which is banded. Their nests are built in heavy woods, and preferably in trees along the bank of a stream. The nest is of the usual Hawk construction and the two to four eggs are white, faintly marked with pale chestnut. Data.—Marathon, Texas. Nest of sticks, lined with weeds and rabbit fur; on a horizontal branch of a cotton-wood ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed

... at night, And he stood by the bed of the Benthamite, And he said, in a voice that thrilled the frame, "If ever the sound of Marathon's name Hath fired thy blood or flusht thy brow, "Lover of Liberty, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... as the Bunker Hill Monument at half a mile's distance; and unless the eye had some means of measuring the space between itself and the stone shaft, one was about as good as the other. A mound like that of Marathon or that at Waterloo, a cairn, even a shaft of the most durable form and material, are fit memorials of the place where a great battle was fought. They seem less appropriate as monuments to individuals. I doubt the durability of these piecemeal obelisks, and when I think ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... help. The Plataeans sent a thousand well appointed warriors to help at Marathon. The term ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... bit of balking myself as a boy, and I am not quite certain that I have even yet become immune. Doctor James Wallace (whose edition of "Anabasis" some of us have read, halting and stumbling along through the parasangs) with three companions went out to Marathon one day from Athens. The distance, as I recall it, is about twenty-two miles, and they left early in the morning, so as to return the same day. Their conveyance was an open wagon with two horses attached. When they had gone a mile or two out of town ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... espoused. He deserved a better fate; and but for prejudice which is so apt to dim the eye and distort the object, Tecumseh would, most probably, be deemed a martyr for his country, and associated in the mind with the heroes of Marathon and Thermopylae. ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... been but four instances in history in which great deeds have been celebrated in words as immortal as themselves: the epitaph upon the dead Spartan band at Thermopylae; the words of Demosthenes on those who perished at Marathon; the speech of Webster in memory of those who laid down their lives at Bunker Hill; and these words of Lincoln on the hill at Gettysburg. As he closed, and while his listeners were still sobbing, he grasped the hand of Mr. Everett, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various

... the end of my first season Edith and I discovered to our delight, when the Summer Colony returned to our hills, that our names had become fixtures on their exclusive list of invitations, I felt as much exaltation as any runner who ever entered a Marathon and crossed the white tape ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty

... excellence to believe that it could send a couple of million of men into the field for the purpose of cutting one another's throats, except clearly as an act of self-defence. Man is the same war-making animal now that he was in the days of Marathon, but he readily admits the evils of war, and is peremptory in demanding that they shall not be incurred save for good and valid reasons. He is as ready to fight as ever he was, but he must fight for some definite cause,—for a cause that will bear ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... "I'll do anything you say but plough or cut wood. My enchanted youth on the farm was filled with those delights, and before I go back to that a swift Marathon runner ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... with his Phoenicians, round Hydrea and Sunium, past Marathon and the Attic shore, and through Euripus, and up the long Euboean sea, till he came to the town of Larissa, where the ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley

... Dick, who had been the leading slugger on the nine, was peculiarly qualified by his "beef" and strength for the position of center. Bert's lightning speed—he had made the hundred yards in ten seconds, flat, and won a Marathon at the Olympic Games—together with his phenomenal kicking ability, made him the leading candidate ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield

... returned. This time they sailed straight across the AEgean Sea and landed near the village of Marathon. As soon as the Athenians heard this they sent their army of ten thousand men to guard the hills that surrounded the Marathonian plain. At the same time they despatched a fast runner to Sparta to ask for help. But Sparta was envious ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... hear nothing of the democracy of the Middle West, but everything of the plutocracy of the middleman, who is probably as unpopular in the Middle West as the miller in the Middle Ages. If Mr. Elihu K. Pike could be transplanted bodily from the neighbourhood of his home town of Marathon, Neb., with his farm and his frame-house and all its fittings, and they could be set down exactly in the spot now occupied by Selfridge's (which could be easily cleared away for the purpose), I think we could really get a great deal of good by watching him, even if the ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton

... "Stanzas to be inserted after stanza 86th in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, instead of the song at present in manuscript."-[MS. note to "To Inez."] [The stanzas To Inez are dated January 25, 1810, on which day Byron and Hobhouse visited Marathon. Most likely they were addressed to Theresa Macri, the "Maid of Athens," or some favourite of the moment, and not to "Florence" (Mrs. Spencer Smith), whom he had recently (January 16) declared emerita to the tune of "The spell is broke, the charm is flown." A ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... take the trouble. Any young lawyer, shopkeeper, or clerk, or shop-assistant can keep himself in good condition if he tries. Some of the best men who have ever served under me in the National Guard and in my regiment were former clerks or floor-walkers. Why, Johnny Hayes, the Marathon victor, and at one time world champion, one of my valued friends and supporters, was a floor-walker in Bloomingdale's big department store. Surely with Johnny Hayes as an example, any young man in a city can hope to make his body all that a vigorous ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... with the fancy that had this imaginary narrative ever been finished, we should have found Plato himself sympathising with the struggle for Hellenic independence (cp. Laws), singing a hymn of triumph over Marathon and Salamis, perhaps making the reflection of Herodotus where he contemplates the growth of the Athenian empire—'How brave a thing is freedom of speech, which has made the Athenians so far exceed every other state of Hellas in greatness!' or, more probably, attributing ...
— The Republic • Plato

... change clothes and walk back after a mile or so," I said. "Suppose we don't make it a Marathon. Why walk farther than ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy

... heartily returned his parting benediction, slowly ascended Mount Hymettus. When they paused to rest upon its summit, a glorious prospect lay stretched out before them. On the north, were Megara, Eleusis, and the cynosure of Marathon; in the south, numerous islands, like a flock of birds, reposed on the bright bosom of the Aegean; to the west, was the broad Piraeus with its thousand ships, and Athens in all her magnificence of beauty; while the stately buildings of distant ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child

... the lad, sitting down on the high stool before the lathe Overholt was not using, "the charge of Balaclava's a true story, because it's been told by both sides; but they all say that it did no good, anyway, except to make poetry of. But Marathon! Nobody had a chance to say a word about it except the Greeks themselves, and they weren't going to allow that the Persians wiped up the floor with them, were they? Why should they? And if Balaclava ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford

... haystacks became ready-made fortifications, and every rising spot was filled with irate hostile yeoman who harried them with aim true and deadly. They soon began to run and leave their wounded behind, and in place of a retreat their disorderly flight must have had the appearance of a Marathon race, the rattle of musketry acting or serving as signals for each to do his ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... of Cyrus, of Darius and Xerxes—which, but for the battles of Marathon and Salamis, might have become the religion of the civilized world, is now professed by only 100,000 souls—that is, by about a ten-thousandth part of the inhabitants of the world. During the last two centuries ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... nevertheless that you are going to crown Demosthenes, who did not indeed bring gold from the Medes, but who received bribes and has them still in his possession. And Themistocles and those who died at Marathon and at Plataea, and the very graves of your ancestors—will they not cry out if you venture to grant a crown to one who confesses that he united with ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... can't intend," he said, said he, "to turn your Maxims on The race that fought at Salamis, that bled at Marathon! You can't propose with brutal force to drive from off your seas The men of Homer's ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley

... Uncle Jim, taking his arm. "We ain't doing a (sanguinary) Marathon. It ain't a (decorated) cinder track. I want a word with you, ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... Hystaspis: nec ejus nomine plures unquam extitere. It is to be observed, that the person, whom he styles Zoroaster, was one Zerdusht. He lived, it seems, in the reign of Darius, the father of Xerxes; which was about the time of the battle of Marathon: consequently not a century before the birth of Eudoxus, Xenophon, and Plato. We have therefore no authority to suppose [950]this Zerdusht to have been the famous Zoroaster. He was apparently the renewer of the Sabian rites: and we may be assured, that he could not be the person so celebrated ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant

... Demaratus. He waited four days, and then, in a rage, bade his best warriors, the Medes and Cissians, bring the Greeks into his presence. The Medes, who were brave men, and had their defeat at Marathon, ten years before, to avenge, fell on, but their spears were short, their shields were thin, and they could not break a way into the stubborn forest of bronze and steel. In wave upon wave, all day ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang

... be in action, and desirous also to make himself popular, left Athens to fight with the bull of Marathon, which did no small mischief to the inhabitants of Tetrapolis. And, having overcome it, he brought it alive in triumph through the city, and afterwards sacrificed it to the Delphian Apollo. The story of Hecale, also, of her receiving and entertaining Theseus ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... counsels of the Eretrians were divided, so that no firm stand might be made, they withdrew. Nevertheless, the Eretrians fought valiantly behind their walls, till they were betrayed on the seventh day. But the Persians, counselled by Hippias, sailed to the bay of Marathon. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... make no difference with your sympathies," he asked with some earnestness, "whether a man is in the right or in the wrong? Would you have had no sympathy for the Greeks at Marathon?" ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell

... after the sheep were folded, and we were all seated beneath the myrtle which shaded our cottage, my grandsire, an old man, was telling of Marathon and Leuctra; and how, in ancient times, a little band of Spartans, in a defile of the mountains, had withstood a whole army. I did not then know what war was; but my cheeks burned, I know not why, and I clasped the knees of that venerable man, ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson

... work Eurystheus was pleased, and after he had regarded the animal for a time with pleasure, set it free. No longer under Hercules' management, the ox became wild again, wandered through all Laconia and Arcadia, crossed over the isthmus to Marathon in Attica and devastated the country there as formerly on the island of Crete. Later it was given to the hero Theseus to become ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various

... fire that nerved the Greek To make his stand at Marathon, Until the last red foeman's shriek Proclaimed that freedom's fight was won, Still lives unquenched—unquenchable: Through every age its fires will burn— Lives in the hermit's lonely cell, And springs from every ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... Marathon—[cy] And Marathon looks on the sea; And musing there an hour alone, I dreamed that Greece might still be free; For standing on the Persians' grave, I could not deem ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... trade, and had made a good start with her ten chickens, in addition to the three Minorcas, five Cochins, and two Pedigree-unknowns, which were all laying eggs like anything. Another of the Cochins, Maud Eliza, was beginning to get broody, and was being trained for her sitting Marathon on a box of my best golf-balls, and altogether things looked ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various

... out the ruffled Kid. "What do you think's been happening? Think an aeroplane ran into my ear and took half of it off? Think the noise was somebody opening bottles of pop? Think those guys that sneaked off down the road was just training for a Marathon?" ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse

... Theseus, who wished for employment and also to make himself popular with the people, went to attack the bull of Marathon, who had caused no little trouble to the inhabitants of Tetrapolis. He overcame the beast, and drove it alive through the city for all men to see, and then sacrificed it to Apollo of Delphi. Hekale, too, and the legend of her having entertained Theseus, does not seem ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... the people—the people, who are always giving their rulers so much trouble, and making it so hard for them—were wildly applauding King George and the Greeks for the firm stand they had taken, and saying that the old fire which burned at Marathon and Thermopylae had not been extinguished; that the modern Greeks were the worthy sons of a ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... business visit to the Grand Vizier. According to Eastern etiquette they discoursed for a while on indifferent subjects. The minister only checked himself in time from making a passing reference to the Marathon Race, remembering that the Vizier had a Persian grandmother and might consider any allusion to Marathon as somewhat tactless. Presently the Minister broached the ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)

... from the northern kingdoms lay, when Upsala's King, Sigurd Ring, came, challenged by Harald Hildetand, who, old and grey, feared to die on a sick bed, and would fall in battle; and the mainland thundered like the plains of Marathon beneath the tramp of horses' hoofs during the battle:[F] bards and female warriors surrounded the Danish King. The blind old man raised himself high in his chariot, gave his horse free rein, and hewed his ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen

... Marathon Resounded over earth and sea, But burning angel lips have blown The trumpets of thy Liberty; For who, beside thy dead, could deem The faith, for which they died, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... Noah, and all the fables of AEsop,' were turned loose into the spacious Plaza del Parque, to fight for the mastery of the arena. To the great delight of his Castilian countrymen, a bull of Xarama vanquished all his antagonists. The 'bull of Marathon, which ravaged the country of Tetrapolis,' says the historian of the day, 'was not more valiant; nor did Theseus, who slew and sacrificed him, gain greater glory than did our most potent sovereign. Unwilling that a beast which ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... some work of art, person, or event; its virtue was to be short, and to be appropriate. The most perfect writer of epigrams in the Greek sense was Simonides,—nothing can exceed the exquisite simplicity that lends an undying charm to his effusions. The epigrams on Leonides and on Marathon are well known. The metre selected was the elegiac, on account of its natural pause at the close of the second line. The nearest approach to such simple epigrams are the epitaphs of Naevius, Ennius, and especially Pacuvius, already quoted. This natural grace, however, was, even in Greek poetry, superseded ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... Athene passed away, over the barren sea. She turned from pleasant Scheria, and came to Marathon and wide-wayed Athens and entered there the strong house of Erechtheus. Meanwhile Odysseus neared the lordly palace of Alcinoues, and his heart was deeply stirred so that he paused before he crossed the brazen threshold; for a sheen as of the sun or moon played ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... struggling humanity in Europe; a guiding pharos across a stormy sea; and Harlem, Leyden, Alkmaar—names hallowed by deeds of heroism such as have not often illustrated human annals, still breathe as trumpet-tongued and perpetual a defiance to despotism as Marathon, Thermopylae, or Salamis. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... this or that county in the struggle for the championship is a matter of supreme importance to boys. He obliged us to affect a passionate interest in the progress of county matches, to work up unnatural enthusiasms. What a fuss there would be when some well-trained boy, panting as if from Marathon, appeared with an evening paper! "I say, you chaps, Middlesex all out ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... surging battle-tide. For war is not to this generation what it has been. The rust of long disuse has been rubbed off by the iron hand of fate,—shall we not say, rather, by the good hand of our God upon us?—and the awful word stands forth once more, red-lettered and real. Marathon, Waterloo, Lexington, are no longer the conflict of numbers against numbers, nor merely of principles against principles, but of men against men. And as we stand on this silent hill, the prize of so ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... supervisor, had opportunities to encourage this growing spirit among the pupils, which he did every chance he found. He featured the splendid training resulting from consistent work upon the cinder-path, and by degrees quite a lively interest was created in the idea of having a regular Marathon running race for all high-school ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson

... first railway train, speed ten miles an hour; now we grumble at fifty. In a few years we shall have an aerial Marathon, with the circumference of the globe ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang

... seen it acted;—the whole theatre frantic with joy, stamping, shouting, laughing, crying. There was Cynaegeirus, the brother of Aeschylus, who lost both his arms at Marathon, beating the stumps against his sides with rapture. When the crowd remarked him—But ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... "The Intrusion of Jimmy," last year was a decided success. In it Mr. Wodehouse demonstrated his ability to hold his sprinting speed over a Marathon distance. The book, after giving the flattering returns of a large sale, found its second production on the stage. In its dramatized version with the title, "A Gentleman of Leisure," it has had its tryout on the road and ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

... those authors and orators Homers and Ciceros, would still shake a disparaging head, and talk of these degenerate days as Homer himself talked ages before Leonidas stood in the pass of Thermopylae, or Miltiades routed Asian armaments at Marathon. Guy Darrell belonged to a former race. The fathers of those young members rising now into fame had quoted to their sons his pithy sentences, his vivid images; and added, as Fox added when quoting Burke, "But you should have ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the defence of good against evil in forms of government. Despotism and absolutism are corrupt uses of force. Republicanism and a constitutional government are its nobler uses. But the force is still behind them, or there would be no power to continue such liberal forms. During the first Republic, Marathon and Thermopylae saved the principle of Western democracy against Oriental despotism, Salamis and Plataea saved Greek letters and Greek art to the continents that were yet to be. Christianity changed the motive but not the ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson

... hell!" and the man fades away again, without even looking startled, to mutter "Well, you needn' be so damn peeved about it—I'll say you needn' be so damn peeved—whatcha think you are, anyhow—Marathon Mike?" as Oliver's feet take Oliver ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet

... is defending his policy; his natural line of argument would have been: "You did not do wrong, men of Athens, to take upon yourselves the struggle for the liberties of Hellas. Of this you have home proofs. They did not wrong who fought at Marathon, at Salamis, and Plataea." Instead of this, in a sudden moment of supreme exaltation he bursts out like some inspired prophet with that famous appeal to the mighty dead: "Ye did not, could not have done ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus

... which, however slowly and reluctantly, error and prejudice have been compelled to relax their hold on the human mind? Dr. Johnson has spoken to us, in his usual stately phrase, of patriotism re-invigorated and of piety warmed amid the scenes of Marathon and Iona; but where is the Marathon which appeals to us so forcibly as the field consecrated by the blood of a Hamden or a Falkland? and where the Iona which is so eloquent with recollections as the walls which have echoed to the voices of a ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... she refused Princeman last night she will not talk to Hollis and scarcely to me is dull and does not eat I beat all entries in ten mile Marathon today and she ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester

... did not feel the sacredness of ancient cultivation. It was still raw, it was no Marathon, and no Johannisberg; yet the stirring sunlight, and the growing vines, and the vats and bottles in the cavern, made a pleasant music for the mind. Here, also, earth's cream was being skimmed and garnered; and the London customers can taste, such as it is, ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... front of the pilaster, the visitor should remark a curious square altar, with Silvanus, to whom the altar is dedicated by the farm servant of Caius Coelius Heliodorus, Callistus; and a trophy discovered on the plains of Marathon. ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold

... the natural powers of the human soul. There is nothing mysterious or miraculous about them, more than in the art of music of a Beethoven or a Paganini, or in gymnastics and the winner of the Marathon. ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck

... cunning, bound by tight cords to the mast-step, that he might listen without hurt to the singing of the Sirens, or wandering by the clear river of Acheron, where the ghosts of fishes flitted over the pebbly bed; or showed the Persian in trews and mitre flying before the Greek at Marathon, or the galleys clashing their beaks of brass in the little Salaminian bay. He drew with silver-point and charcoal upon parchment and prepared cedar. Upon ivory and rose-coloured terracotta he painted with wax, making the ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde

... dined with the Colonel, Grant-Watson, and Kidston at the Palace. I was looking forward to a lot of interesting talk, as the Colonel had just come from the front. Just as we were settling down to our conversational Marathon, up walked ——, the —— Charge and bade himself to dine with us. He is strongly pro-German in his sympathies, and, of course, that put a complete damper on conversation. We talked about everything on earth save the one thing we were interested ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson

... extreme rarity of historical subjects in Greek relief- sculpture, that in the Stoa Poicile (Painted Portico) of Athens, alongside of a Sack of Troy by Polygnotus and a Battle of Greeks and Amazons by his contemporary, Micon, there were two historical scenes, a Battle of Marathon and a Battle of OEnoe. In fact, historical battle-pieces were not rare among the Greeks ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell

... kind, but innumerable delays occurred before the money I sent for arrived, and I am only now on my way to Greece—my native land, the mother of the arts and sciences, the country of Socrates and Plato, of Alexander and Aristides, the battle-fields of Thermopylae and Marathon. Ah, signora, Greece once contained all that is noble and great, and brave—what she once was, such she will be again—when we, her brave sons, have regenerated her, when we have driven forth the accursed Turk, never more to set his foot upon our sacred shore, except as a slave, and a bondman. Ah, ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... were exact, but harmonious opposites in this;—that every old ruin, hill, river, or tree, called up in his mind a host of historical or biographical associations, ... whereas, for myself, notwithstanding Dr. Johnson, I believe I should walk over the plain of Marathon without taking more interest in it than in any other plain of similar features."[467] We might perhaps say that Coleridge's affection was given to ideas, Scott's, to objects; hence Coleridge was a critic of literary principles and theories, Scott a critic of individual books and writers. ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball

... of horses and the tumult of combatants were heard every night on the field of Marathon: that those who went purposely to hear these sounds suffered severely for their curiosity; but those who heard them by ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock

... that ten years back the former Great King had sent his best troops to be signally defeated upon the coast of Attica; but the losses at Marathon had but stimulated the Persian lust of conquest, and the new King Xerxes was gathering together such myriads of men as should crush down the Greeks and overrun their country by mere force ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... busy "getting into good form", as they expressed it. The elder ones worked untiringly at tennis, while the younger ones practised running with a zeal worthy of candidates for a Marathon race. ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... of a low hill and took the decline beyond. The young plainsman had the legs and the wind of a Marathon runner. His was the perfect physical fitness of one who lives a clean, hard life in the dry air of the high lands. The swiftness and the endurance of the fugitive told him that he was in the wake of youth trained ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine

... road was a stationary tram. In the ordinary course of things it would probably have moved on long before Psmith and Mike could have got to it; but the conductor, a man with sporting blood in him, seeing what appeared to be the finish of some Marathon Race, refrained from giving the signal, and moved out into the road to observe events more clearly, at the same time calling to the driver, who joined him. Passengers on the roof stood up to get a good ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse

... for special occasions, especially for the public games. Although a Theban, he was held in the highest estimation by the Athenians, and was courted by kings and princes. Born in Thebes 522 B.C., he died probably in his eightieth year, being contemporary with Aeschylus and the battle of Marathon. We possess also fragments of Sappho, Simonides, Anacreon, and others, enough to show that could the lyrical poetry of Greece be recovered, we should probably possess the richest collection that the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... a piece of vehement declamation and vague description, which might be uttered of any event, or by the man of any time, as a historical ballad. We have had battle ballads sent us that would be as characteristic of Marathon or Waterloo as of Clontarf—laments that might have been uttered by a German or a Hindu—and romances equally true to love all ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... from yours let healing spring. Through the fights of old, your battle-cry was healing, And the Saviour that ye called on was the Sun: Dawn by dawn behold in heaven your God, revealing Light from darkness as when Marathon was won. Gods were yours yet strange to Turk or Galilean, Light and Wisdom only then as gods adored: Pallas was your shield, your comforter was Paean, From your bright world's navel ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... the land. And I am banished, together with the banished children, and fare ill together with those who fare ill, loathing to desert them, lest some may say thus, Behold, now that the children have no father, Iolaus, their kinsman born, defends them not. But being bereft of all Greece, coming to Marathon and the country under the same rule, we sit suppliants at the altars of the Gods, that they may assist us; for it is said that the two sons of Theseus inhabit the territory of this land, of the race of Pandion, having received it by lot, being near akin to these children; on which ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides

... said; "thank you. That was a bit of a Marathon, wasn't it?" He measured the distance across the ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... never so large as New-York, but whose inhabitants produced within the short space of two centuries, reckoning from the battle of Marathon, as Landor says, a larger number of exquisite models, in war, philosophy, patriotism, oratory and poetry—in the semi-mechanical arts which accompany or follow them, sculpture and painting—and in the first of the mechanical, architecture, than the remainder ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... by Clarissa's side—she listlessly turning over a folio volume of steel plates, he pointing out landscapes and scenes which had been familiar to him in his continental rambles, and remarking upon them in a somewhat disjointed fashion—"Marathon, yes—rather flat, isn't it? But the mountains make a fine background. We went there with guides one day, when I was a young man. The Acropolis—hum! ha!—very fine ruins, but a most inconvenient place to get at. Would you like ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... My soul was steeped in unimagined colour, and in the memory of one rapturous instant is gathered what I was soon to see of Greece, is focussed the meaning of history, poetry and art. I was to stand one evening in spring on the mound where heroes sleep and gaze upon the plain of Marathon between darkening mountains and the blue thread of the strait peaceful now, flushed with pink and white blossoms of fruit and almond trees; to sit on the cliff-throne whence a Persian King had looked down upon a Salamis fought and lost.... In that port-hole glimpse ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... in literature and might, When Marathon's broad plains saw sword and fight; Thy monumental ruins stand alone, Decay has breathed upon thy sculptured stone And desolation walks thy princely halls, The green branch twines around thy olden walls; And ye who stood the ten years' siege of Troy, Time's ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins

... collected the treasure of Delos, which made Phidias and the Parthenon possible. During the life of Confucius lived Leonidas, Miltiades, Cyrus the Great, Cambyses, Darius, Xerxes. And then quite naturally occurred the battles of Marathon, Salamis and Thermopylae. Then lived Buddha-Gautama, Lao-tsze, Ezekiel, Daniel, Haggai, Zechariah, Pythagoras, Pindar, AEschylus ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... every year! [Cheers.] What is the first hallowed spot in the Transatlantic pilgrimage of every true American? What is the true Mecca of his heart? Not the hoary tombs of the Pharaohs, and the one hundred gated cities of the Nile. Not the Acropolis and the Parthenon, the plains of Marathon, the Pass of Thermopylae, thrilling as they are with heroic and patriotic emotion; not the Forum and the Coliseum and the triumphal arches of Rome. No; the pious pilgrim from the Far West seeks a sequestered, old-fashioned little town, in the heart of the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... almost wholly the power, so common with inferior understandings, of retaining with regularity and exactness, a number of unimportant uninteresting particulars. It would have been nearly impossible to make him recollect for three days the date of the battle of Marathon, or the names in order of the Athenian months. Nor could he repeat poetry, much as he loved it, with the correctness often found in young men. It is not improbable, that a more steady discipline in early life would have strengthened this faculty, or that he might have supplied its deficiency ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... and constant warfare. The Greek civilisation had scarcely established itself before it was attacked by an Asiatic Power—Persia. Again the Balkan Peninsula was inevitably the scene of the conflict, and such battles as Thermopylae and Marathon made names to resound for ever in the mouths of men. The peril from Persia over, the Balkan Peninsula, after seeing the struggles between the different Greek states for supremacy, was given another great ordeal ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox

... a navy or an army is exactly what the strategic system makes it. Eleven thousand Greeks under Miltiades, highly efficient and thoroughly trained, defeated 100,000 Persians at Marathon. A Greek fleet under Themistocies defeated and almost destroyed a much larger Persian fleet at Salamis. With an army of less than 35,000 men, but highly trained by Philip of Macedon, his father, Alexander, ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske

... reply. "It was only a little country, but had many states, The Spartans and Thespians, mostly the Spartans, fought at Thermopylae. Marathon was fought mostly by Athenians, and Alexander was Phillip's son, ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin

... flourished. The Greek thinkers and scholars despised their masters, but their own heroic days were gone and they were helpless to cast off the yoke. They had no Pericles now, no Leonidas, no Miltiades. Gone were the men of Thermopylae, Marathon, and Salamis. These were lesser, darker days. With a sure instinct men were ceasing to feel any confidence in the future of this pagan civilisation. It had its great elements, but the signs of disruption were already apparent and no one could ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell

... scepter from him. So he plotted against his life, and slew him basely, no man knows how or where. Some say that he waylaid him by OEnoe, on the road which goes to Thebes; and some that he sent him against the bull of Marathon, that the beast might kill him. But AEgeus says that the young men killed him from envy, because he had conquered them in the games. So Minos came hither and avenged him, and would not depart till this land had promised ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... to their duty like the voice of Demosthenes, the Greek patriot, whose constant cry was, "Yet O Athenians, yet there is time. And there is one manner in which you can recover your greatness, or dying fall worthy of your Marathon and Salamis. Yet O Athenians you have it in your power, and the manner of it is this. Cease to hire your armies. Go, yourselves, every man of you, and stand in the ranks, and either a victory, beyond all victories in its glory, awaits you, or falling ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie

... great measure, become disunited by factions, we might, even in these days, however degenerate, have witnessed something like that national energy which was displayed in the bay of Salamis, and on the plains of Marathon." ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... purposes have furnished any working motive, unless where, as express missionaries, they have prepared their readers to expect such a bias to their researches. Colonel Leake, the most accurate of travellers, is a soldier; and in reviewing the field of Marathon, of Plataa, and others deriving their interest from later wars, he makes a casual use of his soldiership. Captain Beaufort, again, as a sailor, uses his nautical skill where it is properly called for. But in the larger proportions of their works, even the professional ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... event, which had happened in a year corresponding to the number of his house, so that the one recalled the other, and some curious point in history always occurred to me whenever I met any one whom I visited. For instance, when I met my tailor, I at once thought of the battle of Marathon; when I saw the well-groomed banker, Christian Gumpel, I immediately remembered the destruction of Jerusalem; when I caught sight of a Portuguese friend, deeply in debt, I thought at once of the flight of Mahomet; when I met the university judge, a man whose probity is well known, I thought ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... understand that life was now largely a matter of personal responsibility with him, and his ears had begun to attune themselves to sound. Whenever Thor moved or heaved a deep sigh, Muskwa knew it. After that day's Marathon with the grizzly he was filled with uneasiness—a fear that he might lose his big friend and food-killer, and he was determined that the parent he had adopted should have no opportunity of slipping away from him unheard ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood

... of mastery over the world and his fortunes. That image[1] seems to me to explain better than any other that remarkable outburst of literary activity which makes the Elizabethan Period unique in English literature, and only paralleled in the world's literature by the century after Marathon, when Athens first knew herself. With Elizabeth England came of age, and at the same time entered into possession of immense spiritual treasures, which were as novel as they were extensive. A New World promised adventures ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter

... people of Athens put themselves, and the whole republic, under the protection of Minerva, the tutelary goddess of their city, and implored of her all kind of prosperity. From the time of the battle of Marathon, in these public acts of worship, express mention was made of the Plataeans, and they were joined in all things with the people ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... I have ceased to talk of her. If I wanted to say anything about Greece I should get down the Poetry Book and quote Lord Byron's fine old ranting verse. "The mountains look on Marathon—and Marathon looks on the sea." But "standing on the Persians' grave" Greece seems in the same humour that made Lord Byron give her up as a hopelessly ...
— The Angels of Mons • Arthur Machen



Words linked to "Marathon" :   marathon runner, footrace, Hellenic Republic, foot race, Ellas, run, labor, pitched battle, project, Greece, undertaking, task



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