Runner (soldier) Runner (soldier) A runner was a military courier, a foot soldier responsible for carrying messages during war. Runners were very important to military communications, before telecommunications became commonplace. The Ancient Greek semi-historical character of Pheidippides is said to have been the runner bringing the news of the Greek victory over the Persians from Marathon to Athens in 490 BC. Even though field telephones were widely used for the first time during World War I (1914–18), they relied on copper wire lines, which were often damaged or unreliable. Radio technology existed, but was generally regarded as too insecure for frontline use.
Pronunciation of Ancient Greek in teaching and Smith reforms, English underwent the Great Vowel Shift, which changed the phonetic values assigned to the English "long vowels", in particular. The same changes affected the English pronunciation of Greek, which thus became further removed from both Ancient Greek and from the Greek that was pronounced in other western countries. A further peculiarity of the English pronunciation of Ancient Greek occurred as a result of the work of Isaac Vossius. He maintained in an anonymously-published treatise that the written accents of Greek did not reflect the original pronunciation. Moreover, Henninus (Heinrich Christian Henning) published "Dissertatio Paradoxa", which claimed that