Case file · Folklore / legend
Pheidippides meets Pan on Mount Parthenion
Herodotus (6.105) reports that the runner Pheidippides, sent from Athens to Sparta before Marathon, said the god Pan called him by name on Mount Parthenion above Tegea.
490 BCE · 37.52, 22.55 · status: legend
The account
Pan asked why the Athenians neglected him though he had often helped them. After the victory at Marathon the Athenians founded a shrine of Pan below the Acropolis with yearly sacrifices and a torch race, which Herodotus presents as the result of the runner's report.
The sceptical view
An exhausted runner crossing the mountains alone is a classic setting for hallucination, and the story also served to justify a new cult in Athens.