It is difficult to form any estimate of value as to the respective merits of different districts in different branches of athletics. The evidence is too fragmentary and extends over too vast a period. Many of the extraordinary performances which Pausanias records belong to the time of the Empire. For the period of Greek independence it seems safe to say that in the Peloponnese the Spartans and Arcadians were most successful in the foot-race, and outside the Peloponnese, the Crotoniats and Cretans.[504] The excellence of the latter in long-distance running is illustrated by Xenophon’s account of the games held by the remnant of the ten thousand at Trapezus, at which no less than sixty Cretans competed in the dolichos.[505] Most of the celebrated runners have been mentioned in the course of our history. To these we may add the names of Phayllus of Croton, a stadiodromos and pentathlete, of whom we shall have more to say, and Ladas of Sparta, a long-distance runner of the fifth century, who must not be confused with a later Ladas of Achaea, who won the stade-race in Ol. 125. The popular idea that Ladas died as he reached the goal, in the very moment of victory, is hardly creditable to the training of the most famous runner of his day. It seems to be a myth, derived from a misunderstanding of the epigram which describes the statue of the runner made by Myron.[506] Pausanias merely tells us that he died shortly after his victory, on his way home. We have no means of comparing the performances of Greek runners with those of our own. We hear of a sprinter who could outrun and catch hares,[507] of another runner who raced a horse from Coronea to Thebes and beat it.[508] Pheidippides, as we all know, ran from Athens to Sparta in two days; Ageus, who won the long race at Olympia in Ol. 113, is reported to have carried the news of his victory to Argos on the same day; and a still better performance is recorded in a fourth-century inscription found at Epidaurus of one Drumos, who records as an “example of manliness,” that he brought the news of his Olympic victory from Elis to Epidaurus on the same day. The distance as the crow flies is nearly ninety miles.[509] All this is too vague for comparison. Such scanty evidence suggests that the Greeks obtained a generally high standard of excellence in running, and that such superiority as they may have possessed was shown rather in long races than in short.