Pedestrianism

ANCIENT GYMHASTICS. 31 there were runners of greatcelebrity; and the rapid marches of their armies on various emer­ gencies, shew how much they were habituated to pedestrian exercises. Two thousand Lace­ demonians marched from Sparta to Attica in three days—a distance of twelve hundred stadia—to assist the Athenians at the battle of Marathon. Phidippides ran seven hundred and fifty stadia in the spaceof two days, which was deemed a most extraordinary effort, until Philonides, the runnerof Alexanderthe Great, accomplished twelve hundred stadia in one day, from Sicyone to Ellis. In the reign of Nero, a boy of nine years of age, ran seventy- five thousand paces, between noonand night*. Although themodern governments of Eu­ rope have not hitherto affordedany patronage to gymnastic exercises, yet pedestrianism has been brought to great perfection by spirited individuals, especially in Britain. Exploits more extraordinary than any on the records * Rolling vol. T. p. 54. of