Stamata Revithi ( el, Σταμάτα Ρεβίθη; 1866 – after 1896) was a
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
woman who ran the 40-kilometre
marathon
The marathon is a long-distance foot race with a distance of , usually run as a road race, but the distance can be covered on trail routes. The marathon can be completed by running or with a run/walk strategy. There are also wheelchair div ...
during the
1896 Summer Olympics
The 1896 Summer Olympics ( el, Θερινοί Ολυμπιακοί Αγώνες 1896, Therinoí Olympiakoí Agónes 1896), officially known as the Games of the I Olympiad ( el, Αγώνες της 1ης Ολυμπιάδας, Agónes tis 1is Ol ...
. The Games
excluded women from competition, but Revithi insisted that she be allowed to run. Revithi ran one day after the men had completed the official race, and although she finished the marathon in approximately 5 hours and 30 minutes and found witnesses to sign their names and verify the running time, she was not allowed to enter the
Panathinaiko Stadium
The Panathenaic Stadium ( el, Παναθηναϊκό Στάδιο, Panathinaïkó Stádio, ), as spelled by Philostratus. or ''Kallimarmaro'' (Καλλιμάρμαρο, , lit. "beautiful marble") is a multi-purpose stadium in Athens, Greece. O ...
at the end of the race. She intended to present her documentation to the
Hellenic Olympic Committee
The Hellenic Olympic Committee (HOC) ( el, Ελληνική Ολυμπιακή Επιτροπή) is the governing Olympic body of Greece. It is the second oldest National Olympic Committee in the world (after the French Olympic Committee), it o ...
in the hopes that they would recognize her achievement, but it is not known whether she did so. No known record survives of Revithi's life after her run.
According to contemporary sources, a second woman, "Melpomene", also ran the 1896 marathon race. There is debate among Olympic historians as to whether or not Revithi and Melpomene are the same person.
Biographical elements
Before the 1896 Olympics
![Baron Pierre de Coubertin](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Baron_Pierre_de_Coubertin.jpg)
Stamata Revithi was born in
Syros
Syros ( el, Σύρος ), also known as Siros or Syra, is a Greek island in the Cyclades, in the Aegean Sea. It is south-east of Athens. The area of the island is and it has 21,507 inhabitants (2011 census).
The largest towns are Ermoupoli, A ...
in 1866. Records of her life from 1896 show that she was living in poverty in
Piraeus
Piraeus ( ; el, Πειραιάς ; grc, Πειραιεύς ) is a port city within the Athens urban area ("Greater Athens"), in the Attica region of Greece. It is located southwest of Athens' city centre, along the east coast of the Saronic ...
in 1896. At that point she had given birth to two children, a son who died in 1895, aged seven, and another child who was seventeen months old by the time of the 1896 Olympics. According to Olympic historian
Athanasios Tarasouleas
Athanasios ( el, Αθανάσιος), also transliterated as Athnasious, Athanase or Atanacio, is a Greek male name which means "immortal". In modern Greek everyday use, it is commonly shortened to Thanasis (Θανάσης), Thanos (Θάνος), S ...
, Revithi, who was blonde and thin with large eyes, looked much older than her age.
[Tarasouleas, ''The Female Spiridon Loues'', 11]
Revithi believed that she could gain employment in
Athens
Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...
, and so walked there from her home—a distance of . Her journey took place several days prior to the
Olympic marathon
The marathon at the Summer Olympics is the only road running event held at the multi-sport event. The men's marathon has been present on the Olympic athletics programme since 1896. Nearly ninety years later, the women's event was added to the pro ...
, a special race of invented as part of the
athletics
Athletics may refer to:
Sports
* Sport of athletics, a collection of sporting events that involve competitive running, jumping, throwing, and walking
** Track and field, a sub-category of the above sport
* Athletics (physical culture), competiti ...
program, and based on
Michel Bréal
Michel Jules Alfred Bréal (; 26 March 183225 November 1915), French philologist, was born at Landau in Rhenish Palatinate. He is often identified as a founder of modern semantics.
Life and career
Michel Bréal was born at Landau in Germany ...
's idea of a race from the city of
Marathon
The marathon is a long-distance foot race with a distance of , usually run as a road race, but the distance can be covered on trail routes. The marathon can be completed by running or with a run/walk strategy. There are also wheelchair div ...
to the
Pnyx
The Pnyx (; grc, Πνύξ ; ell, Πνύκα, ''Pnyka'') is a hill in central Athens, the capital of Greece. Beginning as early as 507 BC (Fifth-century Athens), the Athenians gathered on the Pnyx to host their popular assemblies, thus making t ...
. Bréal took inspiration from
Pheidippides
Pheidippides ( grc-gre, Φειδιππίδης, , ; "Son of Pheídippos") or Philippides (Φιλιππίδης) is the central figure in the story that inspired a modern sporting event, the marathon race. Pheidippides is said to have run from ...
, who, according to legend, ran the distance from Marathon to Athens to announce the Greek victory over
Persia
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
at the
Battle of Marathon
The Battle of Marathon took place in 490 BC during the first Persian invasion of Greece. It was fought between the citizens of Athens, aided by Plataea, and a Persian force commanded by Datis and Artaphernes. The battle was the culmination of ...
, and died immediately after giving his message.
En route to Athens, Revithi encountered a male runner along the road. He gave her money and advised her to run the marathon to become famous, and, consequently, earn money or more easily find a job. After this discussion Revithi decided to run the race: she had enjoyed long-distance running as a child, and believed she could beat the male competitors.
The 1896
Olympic Games
The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a var ...
were the first held in the
Modern era
The term modern period or modern era (sometimes also called modern history or modern times) is the period of history that succeeds the Middle Ages (which ended approximately 1500 AD). This terminology is a historical periodization that is applie ...
and the most important international multi-sport event Greece had ever hosted. The rules of the Games generally excluded women from competition. Influenced by both his times—in the
Victorian era
In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardia ...
women were considered to be inferior to men—and his admiration for the
ancient Olympic Games
The ancient Olympic Games (Ὀλυμπιακοὶ ἀγῶνες; la, Olympia, neuter plural: "the Olympics") were a series of athletic competitions among representatives of city-states and were one of the Panhellenic Games of Ancient Greece. ...
, when only men were allowed to participate in the events, Baron
, the visionary of the modern Olympic Games, was not in favour of women's participation in the Olympic Games or in sports generally. He believed that a woman's greatest achievement would be to encourage her sons to be distinguished in sports and to applaud a man's effort.
1896 marathon
Revithi arrived at the race location, the small village of Marathon, on Thursday, 9 April , where the athletes had already assembled for the following day's race. She attracted the attention of the reporters and was warmly greeted by Marathon's mayor, who sheltered her in his house. She answered the reporters' questions and was quick-witted when a male runner from
Chalandri
Chalandri ( el, Χαλάνδρι, Ancient Greek: Φλύα, ''Phlya'') is a suburb in the northern part of the Athens agglomeration, Greece. It is a municipality of the Attica region.
Geography
Chalandri is a suburb in Northern Athens, around fr ...
teased her, predicting that when she entered the Stadium, there would be no crowds left. Revithi retorted that he should not insult women, since male Greek athletes had already been humiliated by the Americans.
[Tarasouleas, ''The Female Spiridon Loues'', 11. Americans had won golden medals in nine of the twelve athletics events during the previous days.]
![Stade1896](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/Louis_entering_Kallimarmaron_at_the_1896_Athens_Olympics.jpg)
Prior to the start of the race on the morning of Friday, 10 April , the old priest of Marathon, Ioannis Veliotis, was scheduled to say a prayer for the athletes in the church of Saint John. Veliotis refused to bless Revithi because she was not an officially recognized athlete. The organizing committee ultimately refused her entry into the race. Officially, she was rejected because the deadline for participation had expired; however, as Olympic historians David Martin and Roger Gynn point out, the real problem was her gender. According to Tarasouleas, the organizers promised that she would compete with a team of American women in another race in Athens, which never took place.
Beginning at 8:00 the following day, Revithi ran the marathon course on her own. Before starting, she had the town's only teacher, the mayor, and the city magistrate sign a statement testifying to the time she departed from the village. She ran the race at a steady pace and reached
Parapigmata (the place where the
Evangelismos Hospital
Athens General Hospital 'Evangelismos' ( el, Γενικό Νοσοκομείο Αθηνών «Ο Ευαγγελισμός») is one of the largest public hospitals in Greece. It is located in a sub-neighbourhood of Kolonaki named after it, Evange ...
stands today, near the
Hilton Athens
The Hilton Athens was a hotel in Athens, Greece. Opened in 1963, it closed for renovations in January 2022 and will reopen in 2024. It is on Vassilissis Sofias Avenue, within the Hilton Area, adjacent to the Kolonaki and Pangrati neighbourhoods. ...
) at 13:30 (5½ hours). Revithi was not allowed to enter Panathinaiko Stadium—her race was stopped in Parapigmata by a few Greek military officers whom she asked to sign her handwritten report to certify her time of arrival in Athens. She stated to the reporters that she wanted to meet
Timoleon Philimon
Timoleon (Ancient Greek language, Greek: wikt:Τιμολέων, Τιμολέων), son of Timodemus, of Ancient Corinth, Corinth (c. 411–337 BC) was a Greek statesman and general.
As a brilliant general, a champion of Greece against Anci ...
(the General-Secretary of the Hellenic Olympic Committee) to present her case. Historians believe that she intended to present her documents to the Hellenic Olympic Committee in the hopes that they would recognize her achievement. Neither her reports nor documents from the Hellenic Olympic Committee have been discovered to provide corroboration.
[Martin & Gynn, ''Running through the Ages'', 22]
Aftermath
There is no account of Revithi's life following the marathon. Although some newspapers printed articles about her story in the build-up to the marathon, these reports did not follow up on her life after the race. It is not known whether she met Philimon or if she ever found a job. As Tarasouleas stated, "Stamata Revithi was lost in the dust of history".
Violet Piercy
Violet Stewart Louisa Piercy (24 December 1889 – April 1972) was an English long-distance runner who is recognized by the International Association of Athletics Federations as having set the first women's world best in the marathon on 3 Octobe ...
, of the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
, was the first woman to complete an officially timed marathon race: she clocked a time of 3 hours and 40 minutes in a British race on 3 October 1926. Women were finally allowed to run the Olympic marathon at the
1984 Summer Olympics
The 1984 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the XXIII Olympiad and also known as Los Angeles 1984) were an international multi-sport event held from July 28 to August 12, 1984, in Los Angeles, California, United States. It marked the secon ...
, when American
Joan Benoit
Joan Benoit Samuelson (born May 16, 1957) is an American marathon runner who was the first women's Olympic Games marathon champion, winning the gold medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. She held the fastest time for an American woma ...
won the inaugural race in a time of 2 hours and 24 minutes.
Melpomene
![Melpomene-Simmons-Highsmith-detail-1](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Melpomene-Simmons-Highsmith-detail-1.jpeg)
In March 1896, a French-language newspaper in Athens (the ''Messager d'Athènes'') reported that there was "talk of a woman who had enrolled as a participant in the Marathon race. In the test run which she completed on her own
..she took 4½ hours to run the distance of 42 kilometres which separates Marathon from Athens."
[Martin & Gynn, ''Running through the Ages'', 20] Later that year, Franz Kémény, a founding
International Olympic Committee
The International Olympic Committee (IOC; french: link=no, Comité international olympique, ''CIO'') is a non-governmental sports organisation based in Lausanne, Switzerland. It is constituted in the form of an association under the Swiss ...
member from
Hungary
Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...
, wrote in German that, "indeed a lady, Miss Melpomene, completed the 40 kilometres marathon in 4½ hours and requested an entry into the Olympic Games competition. This was reportedly denied by the commission."
[Martin & Gynn, ''Running through the Ages'', 21] According to Martin and Gynn, "a peculiarity here is why there is no first name for Melpomene".
The ''Messager'' report faded into obscurity for about 30 years before it was revived in 1927 in an issue of ''Der Leichtathlet''.
[Tamini, ''Women always in the Race'', 206]
Olympic historian Karl Lennartz contends that two women ran the marathon in 1896, and that the name "Melpomene" was confirmed by both Kémény and
Alfréd Hajós
Alfréd Hajós (1 February 1878 – 12 November 1955) was a Hungarian swimmer, football player and manager, and architect. He was the first modern Olympic swimming champion and the first Olympic champion of Hungary. No other swimmer ever won s ...
, two-time Olympic swim champion of 1896. Lennartz presents the following account: a young woman named Melpomene wanted to run the race and completed the distance in 4½ hours at the end of February or the beginning of March.
The organizing committee, however, did not allow her to run, and the newspaper ''Akropolis'' criticized the committee for its decision. The Olympic Marathon took place on 10 April 1896, and another female runner, Stamata Revithi, took 5½ hours to run the course on 11 April 1896. The newspapers ''Asti'', ''New Aristophanes'' and ''Atlantida'' reported this on 12 April 1896.
However, Tarasouleas argues that no contemporary press reports in Greek newspapers mention Melpomene by name, while the name Revithi appears many times; Tarasouleas suggests that Melpomene and Revithi are the same person, and Martin and Green argue that "a contemporary account referring to Revithi as a well-known marathon runner could explain the earlier run by a woman over the marathon course—this was by Revithi herself, not Melpomene". The daily Athens newspaper ''
Estia
''Estia'' ( el, Ἑστία, , hearth) is a Greek national daily broadsheet newspaper published in Athens, Greece. It was founded in 1876 as a literary magazine and then in 1894 has been transformed into a newspaper, making it Greece's oldest dail ...
'' of 4 April 1896 refers to "the strange woman, who, having run a few days ago in the Marathon as a try-out, intends to compete the day after tomorrow. Today she came to our offices and said 'should my shoes hinder me, I will remove them on the way and continue barefoot'." Moreover, Tarasouleas notes that on 13 March 1896, another local newspaper indicated that a woman and her baby had registered to run the marathon, but again her name is not mentioned. Trying to resolve the mystery, Tarasouleas asserts that "perhaps Revithi had two names, or perhaps for reasons unknown she was attributed the name of the
Muse
In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Muses ( grc, Μοῦσαι, Moûsai, el, Μούσες, Múses) are the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the ...
Melpomene
In Greek mythology, Melpomene (; grc, Μελπομένη, Melpoménē, to sing' or 'the one that is melodious), initially the muse of chorus, eventually became the muse of tragedy, and is now best known in that association.
Etymology
Melp ...
".
[Tarasouleas, ''Stamata Revithi, "Alias Melpomeni"'', 54–55. Miragaya (''The Female Olympian'', 314) believes that after her marathon run, athletics officials could not remember Revithi's name so they labeled her "Melpomene", who is the Greek muse of tragedy. "Looking at Stamata Revithi, they could see only tragedy, not her extraordinary feat."]
See also
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Women at the Olympics
The rate of participation of women in the Olympic Games has been increasing since their first participation in 1900. Some sports are uniquely for women, others are contested by both sexes, while some older sports remain for men only. Studies of me ...
Citations and notes
References
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Revithi, Stamata
1866 births
Year of death unknown
Greek female marathon runners
Greek female long-distance runners
People from Syros