Pheidippides

Pheidippides (Greek: Φειδιππίδης, sometimes given as Phidippides or Philippides), hero of Ancient Greece, is the central figure in a story which was the inspiration for a modern sporting event, the marathon.
The traditional story relates that Pheidippides (530 BC–490 BC), an Athenian herald, was sent to Sparta to request help when the Persians landed at Marathon, Greece. He ran 240 km (150 miles) in two days. He then ran the 40 km (25 miles) from the battlefield near Marathon to Athens to announce the Greek victory over Persia in the Battle of Marathon (490 BC) with the word "Νενικήκαμεν" (Nenikékamen, "We have won") and collapsed and died on the spot from exhaustion.

Most accounts incorrectly attribute this story to the historian Herodotus, who wrote the history of the Persian Wars in his Histories (composed about 440 BC). In reality, the traditional story appears to be a conflation from several different ancient Greek sources having varying levels of authenticity.


The significance of this story is only understood in the light of the legend that the god Pan returned the favor by fighting with the Athenian troops and against the Persians at Marathon. This was important because Pan, in addition to his other powers, had the capacity to instill the most extreme sort of fear, an irrational, blind fear that paralysed the mind and suspended all sense of judgment - panic.

Herodotus was writing about 30 to 40 years after the events he describes, so it is reasonably likely that Pheidippides is a historical figure. If he ran the 246 km over rough roads from Athens to Sparta within two days, it would be an achievement worthy of remembrance. Whether the story is true or not, it has no connection with the Battle of Marathon itself, and Herodotus's silence on the subject of a herald running from Marathon to Athens suggests strongly that no such event occurred.


The first known written account of a run from Marathon to Athens occurs in the works of the Greek writer Plutarch (46–120), in his essay On the Glory of Athens. Plutarch attributes the run to a herald called either Thersippus or Eukles. Lucian, a century later, credits one "Philippides." It seems likely that in the 500 years between Herodotus's time and Plutarch's, the story of Pheidippides had become muddled with that of the Battle of Marathon, and some fanciful writer had invented the story of the run from Marathon to Athens.

While the marathon celebrates the mythical run from Marathon to Athens, since 1982 an annual footrace from Athens to Sparta, known as the Spartathlon, celebrates Pheidippides's at least semi-historical run across 250 km of Greek countryside.





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pheidippides

Liberty Leading the People - Eugène Delacroix

Delacroix's most influential work came in 1830 with the painting Liberty Leading the People, which for choice of subject and technique highlights the differences between the romantic approach and the neoclassical style. Less obviously, it also differs from the Romanticism of Géricault and the Raft of the Medusa.

"Delacroix felt his composition more vividly as a whole, thought of his figures and crowds as types, and dominated them by the symbolic figure of Republican Liberty which is one of his finest plastic inventions…"

Probably Delacroix's best known painting, it is an unforgettable image of Parisians, having taken up arms, marching forward under the banner of the tricolour representing liberty, equality, and fraternity; Delacroix was inspired by contemporary events to invoke the romantic image of the spirit of liberty. The soldiers lying dead in the foreground offer poignant counterpoint to the symbolic female figure, who is illuminated triumphantly, as if in a spotlight.

The French government bought the painting but officials deemed its glorification of liberty too inflammatory and removed it from public view. Nonetheless, Delacroix still received many government commissions for murals and ceiling paintings. He seems to have been trying to represent the spirit and the character of the people, rather than glorify the actual event, a revolution against King Charles X which did little other than bring in a different king, Louis-Philippe, to power.

Following the Revolution of 1848 that saw the end of the reign of King Louis Philippe, Delacroix' painting, Liberty Leading the People, was finally put on display by the newly elected President, Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III.) Today, it is visible in the Louvre museum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugène_Delacroix

Italian Resistant Movement

The Italian resistance movement (It. Resistenza) was a partisan force during World War II.

The 1947 democratic Constitution of the Italian Republic declared itself to be "built on the Resistance".The movement was initially composed of independent troops, spontaneously formed by members of political parties previously outlawed by the Fascist regime, or by former officers of the disbanded Royal Army loyal to the monarchy. Later, the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (CNL; Committee of National Liberation) created by the Italian Communist Party, the Italian Socialist Party, the Partito d'Azione (a republican liberal party), Democrazia Cristiana and other minor parties took control of the movement, in accordance with King Victor Emmanuel III's ministers and the (then) Allies.

The formations were eventually divided between three main groups, the pro communist Garibaldi Brigades, Giustizia e Libertà Brigades (related to Partito d'Azione), and grego-socialist Matteotti Brigades. Smaller groups included Catholic sympathizers and monarchists (like the Green Flames, Di Dio and Mauri), and some anarchist formations. Relations between the different groups were not always good. For example, in 1945 in Porzûs (in the province of Udine), Garibaldi Brigade partisans under Yugoslav command attacked and killed partisans of the Catholic and azionista Osoppo band. The Garibaldi Brigade partisans claimed that the Catholic and azionista Osoppo band partisans had refused to accept the authority of Josip Broz Tito, the Yugoslavian partisan leader. They were also accused of sharing intelligence with the fascist enemy. This famous fratricide was preceded by several instances where the reverse was true. For example, in the Maritime Alps near Mondovì in autumn 1943 some Communists partisans, fugitive after killing German Army (Wehrmacht Heer) officers in anambush, were traded to the Nazi-Fascists by monarchist military officers from the so called azzurri or badogliani who exerted command there in an uneasy truce with the enemy.

While the largest contingents operated in mountainous districts of the Alps and the Apennine Mountains, there were also large formations in the Po plain; in the main towns of Northern Italy, the Gruppi di azione patriottica (G.A.P., Patriotic Action Groups) regularly carried out acts of sabotage and guerrilla warfare, and the Squadre di azione patriottica (S.A.P., Patriotic Action Squads) arranged massive strike actions and campaigns of propaganda. Not unlike the French Resistance, women were important leaders and couriers both in the armed groups, as well as in the industrial areas.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_resistance_movement

The Raft of the Medusa

The Raft of the Medusa is an oil painting of 1818–1819 by the French Romantic painter and lithographer Théodore Géricault (1791–1824). Completed when the artist was just 27, the work has become an icon of French Romanticism.

The Raft of the Medusa portrays the moment when, after 13 days adrift on the raft, the remaining 15 survivors view a ship approaching from a distance. According to an early British reviewer, the work is set at a moment when "the ruin of the raft may be said to be complete". The painting is on a monumental scale of 491 × 716 cm (193.3 × 282.3 in), so that most of the figures rendered are life-sized and those in the foreground almost twice life-size, pushed close to the picture plane and crowding onto the viewer, who is drawn into the physical action as a participant.
As Edmond Burke theorizes the sublime concept, the catastrophism, represents the dichotomy between man and nature, nature is seen as a representation of the divine then the man is a quite manifestation of caducity.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Raft_of_the_Medusa