File:Greek athletic sports and festivals (1910) (14790084493).jpg

Identifier: greekathleticspo00gard (find matches)
Title: Greek athletic sports and festivals
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors: Gardiner, E. Norman (Edward Norman), 1864-1930
Subjects: Athletics Sports Olympics Fasts and feasts
Publisher: London : Macmillan and Co.
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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res in the centre. The object of this curve, which wefind at Athens and in a much less marked degree elsewhere, wasto give a better view of the whole course to the spectators.The west end terminates in a shallow curved sphendone 9Jmetres deep, and the east end is similarly curved, though thecurve is interrupted at the south by the main entrance to thestadium from the precinct below. In this eastern end therestand four pillars of poor and late workmanship which seem tohave formed a triumphal entrance for officials and competitors.The two sides and the western sphendone are surrounded byrows of stone seats raised on a stone basement 5 feet high.There are six rows of seats on the south and west, twelve onthe north, affording places for some 7000 spectators, thoughmany more could find room on the slopes above the stadium tothe north. Flights of steps at the east end gave access to two ^ Pindar, Pyth. viii. 19-20, x. 15, xi. 21.^ B.G.H. I.e. p. 611, and supra, p. 126.^ Pausanias, x. 32, 1.
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>> JS a 260 CH. XII THE STADIUM OF DELPHI 261 corridors which ran right round the stadium, above and belowthe tiers of seats. The latter were further divided by flights ofsteps placed at regular intervals. There were thirteen of theseon either side, dividing the stadium into twelve equal lengthsof half a plethron, and these divisions may have served like thesimilar divisions at Epidaurus for purposes of measurement.Another detail which recalls the stadium of Epidaurus is a seatof honour occupying the centre of the first two rows of seats onthe north side. Such was the Pythian stadium as restored by HerodesAtticus. Before his time it must have been something muchsimpler. The curved end and the stone seats did not exist.Instead, the northern slope was roughly levelled and an embank-ment raised above the southern retaining wall, so that thetrack seemed to lie in a trough, from which fact it derived itspopular name the Lakkoma or hollow. In the intervalsbetween the festivals it can

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