Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 304, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 December 1915 — In the Stadium. [ARTICLE]

In the Stadium.

The word “stadium" is the Latin form of a Greek name for the measure of distance —a stade, 606 feet, or i approximately an eighth of a Roman i mile. As this was the usual distance i for foot races at Olympia, the name j came to be given to the structure wherein the foot races and other athletic contests were held. All the ancient Greek stadia —of which the stadium at Athens, built by Lycurgus 350 B. C. and restored by King George oi Greece in 1906, is a fine example—were semicircular at oi'e end and open at the other, while the perfect elliptical design was the Roman modification to be noted in the Coliseum at Rome and the amphitheater at Pompeii,