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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



... up at impossible hours. They go out in silly little suits and run Marathon heats before breakfast. They chase around barefoot to get the dew on their feet. They hunt for ozone. They bother about pepsin. They won't eat meat because it has too much nitrogen. They won't eat fruit because it hasn't any. They prefer albumen and starch and nitrogen to huckleberry ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock

... rescuer she charged with an angry rumble. Round and round a stunted pinon they raced, hot and angry. I was too helpless with mirth to be of any aid, and the Chief's gun was in the car. Still, an angry range cow on the prod is no joke, and it began to look serious. At last the impromptu marathon ended by the Chief making an extra sprint and rolling into the Ford just as her sharp horns raked ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith

... cela," added Vixen, whose study of the French language chiefly resulted in the endeavour to translate English slang into that tongue. "No, when I grow up I shall take papa the tour of Europe. We'll see all those places I'm worried about at lessons—Marathon, Egypt, Naples, the Peloponnesus, tout le tremblement—and I shall say to each of them, 'Oh, this is you, is it? What a nuisance you've been to me on the map.' We shall go up Mount Vesuvius, and the Pyramids, and do all sorts of wild things; and by the time I come home I shall have ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon

... their own individuality. He revolutionized the youth in that he taught them, instead of a thoughtless obedience to moral customs, to seek to comprehend their purpose in the world, and to rule their actions according to it. Outwardly he conformed in politics, and in war as at Marathon; but in the direction of his teaching he ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz

... with the emotions of ordinary people who are just on the outer edge of historical happenings. For example, the central figure of the first is a slave whose basket of figs is upset by PHEIDIPPIDES running from Marathon; while the last concerns an insignificant little anti-militarist who finds himself cheering for the army on the outbreak of the Boer War. That is the kind of tales they are, slight and momentary things, with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various

... in his Pianto, lay groveling in the dust of decaying thrones. Her lyrist had to sing of pallone-matches instead of Panhellenic games; to celebrate the heroic conquest of two Turkish galleys by a Tuscan fleet, instead of Marathon and Salamis; to praise S. Lucy and S. Paul with tepid fervor, instead of telling how Rhodes swam at her god's bidding upward from ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... AEschines for arraigning him, thus counselling the people, he rises to this great level: "But, never, never can you have done wrong, O Athenians, in undertaking the battle for the freedom and safety of all: I swear it by your forefathers—those that met the peril at Marathon, those that took the field at Plataea, those in the sea-fight at Salamis, and those at Artimesium, and many other brave men who repose in the public monuments, all of whom alike, as being worthy of the same honour, the country buried, AEschines, not ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney

... one of the fundamental laws of Lycurgus, having for its object the encouragement of that very spirit. Attica was full of slaves—yet the love of liberty was its characteristic. What else was it that foiled the whole power of Persia at Marathon and Salamis? What other soil than that which the genial sun of republican freedom illuminated and warmed, could have produced such men as Leonidas and Miltiades, Themistocles and Epaminondas? Of Rome it would be superfluous to speak at large. It is sufficient to name the ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... that the enemy artillery had done less to the entrenched defenders than it was expected to do; at any rate, the line of gray began to break at almost the first impact of the line of brown, and the great hand-to-hand fight that X—— had promised me was transformed into a Marathon. ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various

... follow that the war lasted from shortly after 507 B.C. down to the congress at the Isthmus of Corinth in 481 B.C. (ii.) It is only for two years (490 and 491) out of the twenty-five that any details are given. It is the more remarkable that no incidents are recorded in the period between Marathon and Sabamis, seeing that at the time of the Isthmian Congress the war is described as the most important one then being waged in Greece (Herod. vii. 145). (iii.) It is improbable that Athens would have sent twenty vessels to the aid of the Ionians in 498 ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... perhaps, and after a while his and their names are likewise blotted out, the whole battle itself is forgotten. Those Grecian orators, summa vi ingenii et eloquentiae, set out the renowned overthrows at Thermopylae, Salamis, Marathon, Micale, Mantinea, Cheronaea, Plataea. The Romans record their battle at Cannas, and Pharsalian fields, but they do but record, and we scarce hear of them. And yet this supposed honour, popular applause, desire of immortality by this means, pride and ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... to the log-jam. Muskwa did not sleep soundly. He was beginning to 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 ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood

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

... age's 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 examination: and it did ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... preparing the way for Pericles; for then was being 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, ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... 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 the corner of a side-street into a long street ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson

... 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 ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... 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 the Younger; that Plato himself was ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... Hand, Wir ziehen aus auf Kampf und Tod fuer Gott, fuers Vaterland! Ihr seid mit uns, ihr rauscht um uns, eu'r Geisterodem zieht Mit zauberischen Toenen hin durch unser Jubellied; Ihr seid mit uns, ihr schwebt daher, ihr aus Thermopylae, Ihr aus dem gruenen Marathon, ihr von der blauen See, Am Wolkenfelsen Mykale, am Salaminerstrand, Ihr all' aus Wald, Feld, Berg und Thal im ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... before Trenton, when it seemed all up with the cause of American Independence; what those of the virgin Elizabeth, when the Armada was signalled; what those of Miltiades, when the multitudinous Persian bore down on Marathon? The people looked on at the combat, and saw their chieftain stricken, ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... up after the prairie fire has passed. But the fire had been terrible. It had burnt Athens at least, down to the very roots. True, while Sophocles was dancing, Xerxes, the great king of the East, foiled at Salamis, as his father Darius had been foiled at Marathon ten years before, was fleeing back to Persia, leaving his innumerable hosts of slaves and mercenaries to be destroyed piecemeal, by land at Platea, by sea at Mycale. The bold hope was over, in which the Persian, ever since the days of Cyrus, had indulged—that he, the despot ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... faithful camel loaded with provisions kept close to him. He also sent a large fleet and army to subdue the brave and wise Greeks, who lived in the isles and peninsulas opposite to Asia Minor, thinking he should easily bring them under his dominion, but they met his troops at Marathon, and gained a great victory, driving the ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... lamented his fate, in being doomed to live in such degenerate days, when war is become a mercenary trade; and ardently wished, that the day would come, when he should have such an opportunity of signalizing his courage in the cause of liberty, as that of Marathon, where a handful of Athenians, fighting for their freedom, defeated the whole strength of the Persian empire. "Would to heaven!" said he, "my muse were blessed with an occasion to emulate that glorious testimony on the trophy in Cyprus, erected by Cimon, for ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... teach us 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 ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various

... difficulty in going along with him when he adds—"The account of Shakspeare may stand as a perpetual model of encomiastic criticism, exact without minuteness, and lofty without exaggeration. The praise lavished by Longinus on the attestation of the heroes of Marathon by Demosthenes, fades away before it. In a few lines is exhibited a character, so sublime in its comprehension, and so curious in its limitations, that nothing can be added, diminished, or reformed; nor can the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... 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

... 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 ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... live and breathe and walk in actual Athens; yea, and go far down into the dead centuries and bid in person for the slaves, Diogenes and Plato, in the public market-place, or gossip with the neighbors about the siege of Troy or the splendid deeds of Marathon? We ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

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

... this hidden war field, would it not be grand? What were the plains of Marathon, the pass of Thermopylae, or Cannae paved with golden rings, compared ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... now. There was hardly such a thing 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 Sir Kenelm Digby as a physicist, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... 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 ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge

... Theseus! Marathon admires, "Stain'd by the vanquish'd Cretan bull's black gore. "Thy aid the swains of Cromyon own; thou gav'st "That now secure they till their fields. The land "Of Epidaurus saw the club-arm'd son "Of Vulcan slain by thee. By ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... regular army of citizens, when each tribe formed its own division, both of horse and foot, all these generals and officers would he present. Thus, there were ten generals at Marathon. A change took place in later times, when the armies were more miscellaneous. Three Athenian generals were frequently employed, and at a still later period only one. Demosthenes here touches on a very important matter, which we can well understand, ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes

... name that guy Llewellyn," he commented, as he strolled away; "that means lightning, according to some book or other. There was an old Marathon racer a couple of ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... his anger. In a curious chapter, he exhausts invective in denouncing them.[12] The sarcasm of Sallust delights him, that the actions of Greece were very fine, verum aliquanto minores quam fama feruntur. Their military glory was only a flash of about a hundred and fourteen years from Marathon; compare this with the prolonged splendour of Rome, France, and England. In philosophy they displayed decent talent, but even here their true merit is to have brought the wisdom of Asia into Europe, for they invented nothing. Greece was the home of syllogism and of unreason. 'Read Plato: at every ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley

... restored, nearly every stone in its place, by two German architects during the reign of Otho, and it stands again just as Pausanias described it on the spot where old AEgeus watched for the return of Theseus from Crete. In the distance are Salamis and AEgina, and beyond the purple hills lies Marathon. If the Melian statue be indeed the Victory Without Wings, she had ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... wars—The expedition 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, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... 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 Delphinian Apollo. The story of Hecale, also, of ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... consideration; and 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 and his workshop to take an active part in public affairs. He might be more ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... whimsical lines on a possible railroad in the Holy Land. Think of having Bannockburn shouted by the station master, as the train runs whistling up to a small station house. Nothing to be seen there but broad, silent meadows, through which the burn wimples its way. Here was the very Marathon of Scotland. I suppose we know more about it from the "Scots wha ha' wi' Wallace bled," than we do from history; yet the real scene, as narrated by the historian, has ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... fails to win; not only will the sweat of their brows be sweet, and the sweetener of the rest that follows; but, when the victory is at last achieved, they will come in for a share in the glory; even as the meanest soldier who fought at Marathon or at King's Mountain became a sharer in the glory of those saving days; and within his own household circle, the approbation of which approaches the nearest to that of an approving conscience, was looked upon as the representative of all his brother-heroes; ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... "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 show ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine

... little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... where numberless ships 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 way. Odin himself had due reverence paid to Hildetand's bones; and the ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen

... Greece. He visited the plain of Marathon, and strove to imagine the Persian defeat; to Mars Hill, to picture St. Paul addressing the ancient Athenians; to Thermopylae and Salamis, to run through the facts and traditions of the Second Invasion—the result of his ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... the unharvested seas, and left pleasant Scheria, and came to Marathon and wide-wayed Athens, and entered the good house of Erechtheus. Meanwhile Odysseus went to the famous palace of Alcinous, and his heart was full of many thoughts as he stood there or ever he had reached the ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.

... nothing 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 runs ...
— Rafael in Italy - A Geographical Reader • Etta Blaisdell McDonald

... 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 has proven a success. With Douglas Fairbanks in the leading role, ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck



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



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