Stadium

“ In the fairly well-preserved theater to the northwest, quantities of yellow flowers were growing, with some daisies. Among the gray limestone blocks of the orchestra I found a quantity of excellent blackberries. Where once was the stage, there are now brown grasses dried up by the sun. This theater is very steep, and above it towers a precipice. Near by, between the theater and the stadium, Parnassus gives back to your cry a swift and sharp echo. The gold, red-gold, and gray stadium, which lies farther up the mountain than the theater, is partly ruined, but in parts is well preserved. ”

“ There are two masses of building to the north-westward of the stadium, which appear to have had some connection with it, but we will not venture to state any decided opinion with respect to [537] their precise use. One of them is a solid quadrangular mass, now about five feet in height, which appears to have been intended as a station merely, from which the horses and chariots of those contending for the prize might be inspected as they entered or came out of the stadium, for it is not sufficiently elevated to command a view of the course. ”

“ Between the precinct and the theatre was a large gymnasium, which was in later times converted to other purposes, a small odeum being built in the middle of it. In a valley just to the south-west of the precinct is the stadium, of which the seats and goal are well preserved. There is a gutter round the level space of the stadium, with basins at intervals for the use of spectators or competitors, and a post at every hundred feet of the course, thus dividing it into six portions. ”

“ When the huge, wooden stadium burned at the Polo Grounds, in the spring of 1911, Base Ball men sat aghast, because it meant much to the national pastime to lose the home of the most important National League club in the largest city of the United States. ”

“ Leaping cheerleaders, a brassy band, and the Dixie Darlings are a part of the wonderful game of football. It’s a rich guy being chauffeured to the stadium gate, and a frightened boy shinnying the fence and darting for the end zone seats. ”

“ The stadia and hippodromes were oblong enclosures surrounded by tiers of seats and without conspicuous architectural features. The palæstra or gymnasium—for the terms are not clearly distinguished—was a combination of courts, chambers, tanks (piscinæ) for bathers and exedræ or semicircular recesses provided with tiers of seats for spectators and auditors, destined not merely for the exercises of athletes preparing for the stadium, but also for the instruction and diversion of the public by recitations, lectures, and discussions. ”

“ Section 1 of the Safety of Sports Grounds Act 1975 empowered the Secretary of State to designate a sports stadium having, in his opinion, accommodation for more than 10,000 as a stadium requiring a certificate from the local authority. ”

“ On the south side of these was again a double portico; and on the north, outside the pillars, the xystus, or covered porch, where the athletes exercised in winter and in bad weather. The arena was twelve feet wide, and sunk a foot and a half below a marginal path of ten feet, where spectators could walk. On the north and south sides of the whole building were wings, of less width, extending nearly its entire length. That on the north contained the stadium, or foot-race course, which was, however, sometimes disconnected from the gymnasium. ”

“ Now the largest of the zones into which a passage was cut from the sea was three stadia in breadth, and the zone of land which came next of equal breadth; but the next two, as well a zone of water as of land, were two stadia, and the one which surrounded the central island was a [Pg 356] stadium only in width. The island in which the palace was situated had a diameter of five stadia. This, and the zones and the bridge, which was the sixth part of a stadium in width, they surrounded by a stone wall, on either side placing towers, and gates on the bridges where the sea passed in. ”

“ Nevertheless I must say what I was told. It was excavated to the depth of a hundred feet, and its breadth was a stadium everywhere; it was carried round the whole of the plain, and was ten thousand stadia in length. ”

“ People go wild with excitement as they did long ago when they watched the contests in the arena in the Circus Maximus, in the stadium, or as they did who lined the road from Marathon to Athens to watch the footrunners. ”

“ It is an altogether pictorial context; the imagery of the foot-race comes suddenly up, and in a moment raises before us the vision of the stadium and its surroundings. The reader cannot see the course with his inner eyes without also seeing those hosts of eager lookers-on which made, on every such occasion, in the old world as now, the life of the hour. ”

“ When the column had circled the arena Nemone quit her chariot and ascended to her loge above the ramp amid the continued cheering of the populace, the chariots driven by the nobles lined up in the center of the arena, the royal guard formed across the entrance to the stadium, and the nobles who had no part in the games went to their private loges. ”

“ Before each match at a designated stadium, the police should ensure that the fire service and ambulance service are given full details about the event, including its venue, its timing, the number of spectators expected, their likely routes of entry and exit, and any anticipated or potential difficulties concerning the control or movement of the crowd. ”

“ On the side of a hill, about three hundred yards to the north, are the remains of a theatre. Crossing some patches of barley and lentils, we entered a stadium, forming an extension of the theatre — that is it took the same breadth and direction, so that the two might be considered as one grand work, more than one thousand feet long by nearly four hundred wide. ”

“ Joseph Urban for joining to the present concrete stadium of Mr. Arnold Brunner its duplicate in wood, on the east side of the field, and so placing the stage on its narrower width to the north, there will be created a practical outdoor theatre, remarkable in acoustics, qualified to accommodate in excellent seats about twenty thousand spectators, and some two or three thousand participants in the festival. ”

“ See the fellows down there forming the procession. They'll march up and down the Stadium several times and throw their hats up over the goals. No one ever expects to get his own hat back, but it's all part of the game. ”

“ The graduates and friends of Harvard like to provide her with a handsome fence round the Yard, with a fair array of shrubs within the fence, with a handsome stadium instead of shabby, wooden seats round the football gridiron, and to take steps for securing in the future broad connections between the grounds of the University and the Cambridge parks by the river. ”

“ A little to the north of the theater is the ancient stadium. Some scholars think that when Paul says in 1 Cor. 15:32, “If after the manner of men I fought with beasts at Ephesus,” he is speaking of an incident that literally occurred, and suppose that he was actually condemned to be thrown to the beasts in the stadium, to make a spectacle for the Ephesian populace, and that in some way he escaped alive. It is possible that this may be true. If so, this stadium (see Fig. 282) presents to the eye a spot which is of great interest to every Christian. ”

“ But our endowment is so low, and what with the cost of the new athletic field—though I am delighted to be able to say our friends have made it possible to create a really magnificent field, with a fine cement stadium—but it has left us up against a heart-breaking deficit. ”

“ Under that denomination was included not only the space in which the Athletæ ran, but also that which contained the spectators of the gymnastic games. The place where the Athletæ contended was called Scamma, from its lying lower than the rest of the Stadium, on each side of which, and at the extremity ran an ascent or kind of terrace, covered with seats and benches, upon which the spectators were seated. The most remarkable parts of the Stadium were its entrance, middle, and extremity. ”

“ The decay of athletics was accompanied by an increased activity in the construction and improvement of gymnasia and stadia, which continued all through Hellenistic and Roman times. The stadia at Olympia and Delphi were reconstructed during the fourth century; the Panathenaic stadium at Athens was the work of the Athenian administrator Lycurgus, who also rebuilt the Lyceum Gymnasium, planted it with trees, and built a new palaestra or wrestling-school in it. ”

“ Seats and stools are no uncommon accompaniment of athletic scenes on the vases, where they serve, among other purposes, for the athletes to put their clothes upon. That the gymnasium and palaestra were intended for competitors at the festivals and were little used at other times is proved by an inscription at 160Delphi which contains the contracts for preparing for the festival not only the stadium and hippodrome, but also the gymnasium and palaestra. ”

“ Passing among fragments, and over numerous old foundations, we arrive at the Stadium, which is also a hollow, but of a different shape; and the seats do not remain. At some distance, and not very far from my first entrance into this valley, is an extensive marble pavement, which apparently once belonged to a large temple, but there is no vestige either of walls or columns. Some Roman antiquities in the lower part closed my observations. On the road hence to Lycourió there are some inscriptions, and fragments of mouldings. ”

“ The buildings which still exist are however of an interesting character, and excavation would be particularly desirable in this part. Two eminences which rise conspicuously above the general level of the summit are occupied by the ruins of spacious temples, and close to the western wall of the city is all that remains of the stadium. The largest of the temples (we mean the ædes, without the columns) is a hundred and sixty-nine English feet in length, and its breadth sixty-one feet. ”

“ Each club should consult with a recognised supporters' club as to the provision of pre-match entertainment aimed at attracting spectators to the ground in good time. Police Planning
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26. The Chief Constable of each police force in whose area there is one designated stadium or more should nominate a chief officer to liaise with the management of each football club and local authority concerned in respect of the safety and control of crowds. ”

“ Within the park is the stadium, the largest athletic field of its kind in America, thirty acres in all, seating sixty thousand spectators. The park extends to the Ocean Beach Boulevard, on the edge of the sands, where the breakers come bounding in against the Seal Rocks and the high promontory on which the Cliff House stands. The water is cold, and a dangerous undertow makes bathing unsafe, but the shore is lined with cars; hundreds of people and children are on the sand, and the tame sea-gulls are walking on the street pavement very much like chickens. ”

“ The Stadium, in which the Panathenaic Games were held, was first laid out by the orator Lycurgus about 330 B.C. It was an oblong structure filling a natural depression near the left bank of the Ilissus beneath the eastern declivity The Stadium and Odeum of Herodes Atticus. of the Ardettus hill, the parallel sides and semicircular end, or σφενδόνη around the arena being partially excavated from the adjoining slopes. ”

“ Each morning there were five baseball games, the first one beginning at four A. M. Boxing and wrestling160 matches, swimming and running races, driving and jumping contests were to be seen each Sunday in the stadium which faced Lake Topeka. In the time between races and contests the people played poker, solo, rummy and pool, and shot craps in the palace, which was the one public building in the city. In its single vast room there were countless tables for the players, and these tables were circled by a bar of such circumference that a man would grow a beard while walking the length of it. ”

“ The short valley thus obtained was lengthened by two great piers of rubble-work; the stone facing which once completed them is gone, and exposes the rubble, evidently laid in successive courses with a coat of stucco or mortar between each. On the right hand are vast foundations of the same nature, forming, as is supposed, the substruction of the temple of Victory, and of the immense flight of steps continued to it from the Stadium: on the left are traces of other edifices, which are said to have constituted parts of the temple of Fortune. ”

“ There was no town at Nemea, 225merely a sanctuary of Zeus with a stadium and a hippodrome, and we must suppose also a gymnasium. The cypress grove in which the temple of Zeus stood has disappeared, and of the temple itself only three pillars are left, sufficient, however, to show that the temple cannot have been much earlier than the close of the fifth century. The site of the stadium is also visible in a deep ravine some 650 feet long, the end of which forms a natural sphendone. There is no trace of hippodrome or gymnasium. ”

“ Among the university buildings are two dining-halls accommodating some 2500 students, a theatre for public ceremonies, a chapel, a home for religious societies, a club-home (the Harvard Union) for graduates and undergraduates, an infirmary, gymnasium, boat houses and large playgrounds, with a concrete stadium capable of seating 27,000 spectators. Massachusetts Hall (1720) is the oldest building. University Hall (1815) , the administration building, dignified, of excellent proportions and simple lines, is a good example of the work of Charles Bulfinch. ”