A few days ago I was surprised, when reading a recipe, to discover the Greek name for the herb (and vegetable) fennel is marathon.
This sounds very similar to the name of the famous Battle of Marathon (490 BCE), at which an Athenian army, with a smaller contingent from Plataea, resoundingly defeated a much stronger Persian force, in an encounter often seen as the epitome of a brave defence overcoming a powerful and aggressive adversary.
And indeed the place is named after the plant. I once visited Marathon and there wasn't a whole lot to see really, and I can't remember any fennel, but the place was noted for it in the 5th century BCE. The word marathon itself has a long history, because it is attested in a tablet or tablets from Mycenaean times, so around a millennium earlier than our battle. The tablet was written in Linear B script, not Greek characters, although the language was early Greek, and the word is transcribed like this
To return to the story: the Athenians had sent a runner, Pheidippides, to the other pre-eminent Greek city at the time, Sparta, to ask for assistance, but Sparta was in the middle of a solemn religious festival whoch prevented them for responding straightaway.
There was not enough time to wait for the delayed Spartan help to arrive, so the Athenian army and 1000 soldiers from Plataea fought alone. The Greeks attacked the Persians and eventually won, against the odds.
Now although Pheidippides' epic run seems to have been to Sparta, as described above, in time a second version of the story emerged: that Pheidippides ran instead to Athens, bearing news of the victory. Marathon to Athens is - well, about the length of a modern Marathon. When the Olympic Games were resurrected in 1890, a race over this distance was included, although it had not been part of the ancient Games.
Now -athon has become a productive suffix denoting some activity taking place over an unusually long distance or time, so in the OED you can find danceathon, skate-a-thon, cut-a-thon (hairdressers) and schmoozathon, and Collins gives walkathon, drinkathon and sale-a-thon as examples.
The Battle of Fennel
This sounds very similar to the name of the famous Battle of Marathon (490 BCE), at which an Athenian army, with a smaller contingent from Plataea, resoundingly defeated a much stronger Persian force, in an encounter often seen as the epitome of a brave defence overcoming a powerful and aggressive adversary.
And indeed the place is named after the plant. I once visited Marathon and there wasn't a whole lot to see really, and I can't remember any fennel, but the place was noted for it in the 5th century BCE. The word marathon itself has a long history, because it is attested in a tablet or tablets from Mycenaean times, so around a millennium earlier than our battle. The tablet was written in Linear B script, not Greek characters, although the language was early Greek, and the word is transcribed like this
To return to the story: the Athenians had sent a runner, Pheidippides, to the other pre-eminent Greek city at the time, Sparta, to ask for assistance, but Sparta was in the middle of a solemn religious festival whoch prevented them for responding straightaway.
There was not enough time to wait for the delayed Spartan help to arrive, so the Athenian army and 1000 soldiers from Plataea fought alone. The Greeks attacked the Persians and eventually won, against the odds.
Now although Pheidippides' epic run seems to have been to Sparta, as described above, in time a second version of the story emerged: that Pheidippides ran instead to Athens, bearing news of the victory. Marathon to Athens is - well, about the length of a modern Marathon. When the Olympic Games were resurrected in 1890, a race over this distance was included, although it had not been part of the ancient Games.
Now -athon has become a productive suffix denoting some activity taking place over an unusually long distance or time, so in the OED you can find danceathon, skate-a-thon, cut-a-thon (hairdressers) and schmoozathon, and Collins gives walkathon, drinkathon and sale-a-thon as examples.