Once, when this sad, restless, and incorrigible giant known as Western Civilization was very young - still an infant in the sunlit cradle of the Balkan Peninsula - a great emperor of the East sent his warriors to claim it and impose his regime: despotism.

However, the men of this infant civilization, and specifically the Athenians, its most brilliant offshoot, donned swords and wore armor, bid farewell to their wives, and went to confront the invaders, where the blue Aegean passionately meets the soil of ancient Greece.

As the city of Athens was small and the warriors of the Persian absolute monarch were countless, what the men needed, after the blessing of their gods, was reinforcements. But there was a problem. Because the Greeks lived in limited small city-states, isolated from their neighbors, with mountains and seas between them, they were obliged to cover great distances to seek help from one another.

Thus, when the citizens of Athens learned that the army of the Persian ruler was approaching, they sent a trained long-distance runner to request assistance from the citizens of Sparta, which was about two hundred and forty-two kilometers away from Athens. The name of this messenger was Pheidippides.

[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]