Stamata Revithi inspiration from Pheidippides, who, according to legend, ran the distance from Marathon to Athens to announce the Greek victory over Persia at the Battle of Marathon, 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 were the
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