'Son of Pheídippos') or Philippides (Φιλιππίδης) is the central figure in the story that inspired the marathon race.

The Greek historian Herodotus was the first person to write about an Athenian runner named Pheidippides participating in the First Persian War.

According to the account he gave the Athenians on his return, Pheidippides met the god Pan on Mount Parthenium, above Tegea.

Pan, he said, called him by name and told him to ask the Athenians why they paid him no attention, in spite of his friendliness towards them and the fact that he had often been useful to them in the past, and would be so again in the future.

The Athenians believed Pheidippides's story, and when their affairs were once more in a prosperous state, they built a shrine to Pan under the Acropolis, and from the time his message was received they held an annual ceremony, with a torch-race and sacrifices, to court his protection.

On the occasion of which I speak – when Pheidippides, that is, was sent on his mission by the Athenian commanders and said that he saw Pan – he reached Sparta the day after he left Athens and delivered his message to the Spartan government.

According to Miller (2006), Herodotus, only 30–40 years removed from the events in question, based his account on eyewitnesses,[7] so it seems altogether likely that Pheidippides was an actual historical figure.

This poem inspired Baron Pierre de Coubertin and other founders of the modern Olympic Games to invent a running race of approximately 40 km (25 mi) called the marathon.

[citation needed] Based on Herodotus's account, British RAF Wing Commander John Foden and four other RAF officers travelled to Greece in 1982 on an official expedition to test whether it was possible to cover the nearly 250 kilometres (155 miles) in a day and a half (36 hours).

Since 1983, it has been an annual footrace from Athens to Sparta, known as the Spartathlon, celebrating Pheidippides's run across 246 km (153 mi) of the Greek countryside.