Remember e-mail lists? An interesting spat has broken out on the classicists e-mail list (though the web archive seems to be broken at the moment). The battle of Marathon, after which our great race is named, took place in 490 BC. Forgetting that we went straight from 1 BC to 1 AD, with no year 0, some have proclaimed 2010 as the 2,500th anniversary, but it is of course the 2,499th. The argument becomes more complicated because schools and universities, who live by academic years, will be marking the event. The casus belli was an announcement of a Marathon anniversary event run for schools by Oxford which takes place in the academic year 2010-11, though in the calendar year 2010.
I shall run my next marathon, the Brighton marathon, in the correct anniversary year.
