I love how a meme about marathons is degenerating into a religious discussion....

Everyone is ignorant in some way though, you cannot know it all.

The full story is that before the Battle of Marathon, Pheidippides ran around 240 km to Sparta to ask for aid in the upcoming battle and then back to bring their message. He then fought a probably exhaustive battle and then ran to Athens (if I am not mistaken) to tell them of the victory, adding ~ 42 km more.

So in total he ran around 524 km. Not sure in what time exactly, but I assume he wasn't tardy. Then he died of exhaustion.

By the way, the run to Sparta is, since a few RAF officers did it after WW2, now also a race and your name gets put on a slab of rock somewhere.

That's because the legend is most likely a mix of fictional accounts. The one you are thinking of is the story recounted by Lucian of Samosata around 600 years after the events and is a romanticized retelling of a story by Plutarch from a 100 years before.

The one the person who responded to you claiming that he ran like 500km is an even more fictional account from 1874. From an author that combined stories from 3 different more contemporary but still likely fictional accounts.

So honestly you are more correct than the vast majority of the people on this thread.

The wikipedia article is a little ambiguous on this.

Pheidippides is said to have run approximately 240 kilometres (150 mi) from Athens to Sparta (and back to Athens)

My first interpretation was that the run from Athens to Sparta was 240km, and additionally he ran back to Athens which would be an extra 240km. Which would actually seem correct, as osm's route is about 217km one way.

Nah, that misconception was popularized in the late 1800s and is basically a tall tale based on several other tall tales.

Yes a bit more actually. I answered in more detail to another comment in this thread. Also like another comment said the reporting on it all is a bit nebulous, too.