The beauty of the hippodrome at Constantinople has been long since detheed by the rude hands of the Turkish conque rors; but, under the similar appellation of A bncidan, it still serves as a place of exercise tor their horses. Whether the Olympic hippodrome was so long or so wide as this of Con stantinople. it is not now easy to determine ; but it must evidently have been considerably longer than an ordinary stadium, in order to allow for the turnings of the chariots and horses round the pillars which served as 'betas or goaLs, without running against them, or against one another. The length of the course, or the distances between the two metas or goals, is not easily ascertained. It is probable, however, that the two pillars, viz., that from which the horses started, and that round which they turned, which divided the course into two equal lengths, were two stadia distant from each other ; consequently, the whole length of the race, for a chariot drawn by full-aged horses, consisting of 12 rounds, amounted to 45 stadia, or six Grecian miles; and that of the chariot drawn by colts consisted of eight rounds, or 32 stadia, or four Grecian miles—a Grecian mile, according to Arbuth not's computation, being somewhat Inure than 500 paces, whereas an English mile is equal to 1,056. Pausanias informs us, that in the Olympic hippodrome, near that pillar called Nysse, probably that which was erected at the lower end of the course, stood a brazen statue of Ilippodanda, holding in her hand a sacred fillet or diadem, prepared to bind the head of Pelops for his victory over (Enornaus; and it is probable that the whole space between the pillars was filled with statues or altars, as that in the hippodrome at Constantinople seems to have been. 1 Jere, however, stood
the tripod, or table, on which were placed the olive-crowns and the branches of palm destined for the victors. Besides the hippodromes at Olympia and Constantinople, there were courses of a similar kind at Carthage, Alexandria in and other places.
We have some vestiges in England of the hippodrome, in which the ancient inhabitants of this country performed their races. The most remarkable k that near Stonehenge, which is a long tract of ground, about 350 feet, or 200 druid cubits wide, and more than a mile and three-quarters, or (1,000 druid cubits in length, enclosed quite round with a bank of earth, extending directly east and west. The goal and career are at the east end. The goal is a high hank of earth, raised with a slope inwards, on which the judges are supposed to have sat. The inetat are two tumuli, or small barrows, at the west end of the course. These hippodromes were called, in the language of the country, rhedagua, the racer rhedagwr, and the carriage rheda, from the British word rhedeq, to run. One of these hippodromes, about half a mile to the south ward of Leicester, retains evident traces of the old name rhedugua, in the corrupted one of rattitaes. There is another of these, says Dr. Stukely, near Dorchester, another on the banks of the river Lowther, near Penryth, in Cumberland, and another in the valley just without the town of Royston.