[771]. Mus. Greg. ii. xxii. 1 A.
[772]. In Roman times both stadium and hippodrome merge into the circus. The hippodrome at Constantinople is a purely Roman structure and does not concern us; so is the hippodrome at Pessinus (Texier, Asie Mineure, Pl. lxii.).
[773]. Paus. viii. 38, 5; Expédition en Morée, ii. p. 37, Pls. xxxiii.
[774]. Paus. vi. 16, 4; Plut. Sol. 23; Photius, p. 296.
[775]. Paus. vi. 20. Many of the details are much disputed. I have followed in the main the account given by A. Martin in Dar.-Sagl. s.v. “Hippodrome.”
[776]. Quoted in Dar.-Sagl., s.v. “Olympia,” p. 177, n. 5; cp. Frazer, Pausanias, v. p. 616, and Schoene in Jahrb. xii. p. 150. Schoene’s conclusions as to the distances of the races seem to me quite impossibly long.
[777]. Martin’s statement that the part of the aphesis near the base was open, and the apex covered in, is hardly warranted by the words of Pausanias, and seems improbable.
[778]. Alcibiades on one occasion entered no less than seven chariots of his own. Thuc. vi. 16, 2.
[779]. Ervinus Pollack, Hippodromika. Leipsic, 1890.
[780]. It can hardly have been as fair; for the outside chariots had the enormous advantage of a flying start. I conjecture, however, that the chariots did not really start racing till they were all in line, and that the object of the aphesis was partly to facilitate the getting them into line, no easy matter with a large field.