HIPPODROME (Gr. hippos, a horse, and dromos, a race-course), the Greek name for the place set apart for horse and chariot races. Its dimensions were according to the common opinion, half a mile in length and one-eighth of a mile in breadth. In construc tion and all important points of arrangement, it was the counterpart of the Roman, circus (q.v.), with the exception of the arrangement of the chariots at the starting-place. In the hippodrome, the chariots were arranged so as to form two sides of an isosceles triangle, with the apex towards the goal and a little to the right side. But as this would have given the chariots on the left side a longer course than those on the right, the hip podrome was constructed with the right side longer than the other. The start was effected by setting free the chariots on the extreme right and left, and when they came opposite the next two, by setting them free also, and so on till all were in motion. The hippodrome,was also much wider than the Roman circus, to allow the greater number of chariots, for though we have no precise information as to the number that usually started in one race, we know that Alcibiades on one occasion sent seven; Sophocles mentions ten chariots as competing at the Pythias games; and the number at the Olympic games must have been considerably greater. There is a beautiful
description of a chariot-race in Homer (Iliad, xxiii. 262450). The golden age of the hippodrome was during the lower Greek empire. The blue an green factions in the hippodrome carried their animosity into all departments of the public service, and laid the foundation of that perpetual disunion which rendered the Byzantine empire a prey to every aggressor.—The term hippodrome has been given to a circus constructed in 1845 at Paris, and also to a large field in the plain of Longchamp, near Boulogne, used as a race-course.