stadion

plural stadia · plural stadions

1. historicalA Greek unit of distance based on standardized footraces, equivalent to about 185.4 metres.

   Major Lacius, together with his soldiers, met the group in a place about two stadions from the court.

   2011, Ali Kemal Senan, Phaselis, →ISBN, page 510

   3 more examples

   The stadion did not suffice for the races of horses and chariots which had been favorites with the Greeks since the Trojan war.

   1883: Franz von Reber (translated by Joseph Thacher Clarke), History of ancient art, p257 (S. Low…)

   The stadion was used specifically for human athletic contests whereas the Greek hippodrome and later the Roman circus were used for equestrian events. The gymnasion and the palaistra were used for training purposes for human athletic events.

   1993: David Gilman Romano, Athletics and Mathematics in Archaic Corinth: The Origins of the Greek Stadion, page 1 (Diane Publishing Co.; →ISBN (10) (13))

   Stadion Race (200 meters) […] The winner of the Stadion race could justifiably be called the fastest man in the Greek world. According to legend, Herakles, whose feet were 0·32 meters (12·7 inches) long, stepped-off the Stadion at Olympia. Since he chose a distance of 600 “feet”, this made the race at Olympia 192 meters. Herakles staged a race for his brothers, the Kouretes, and crowned the victor with a branch of wild olive. Although the Greek Stadion race was always 600 feet, other Greek gods had “feet” of different lengths. This caused the length of the Stadion race to vary slightly from stadium to stadium. This list of Olympic victors compiled by Hippias in about 400 B.C. lists the Stadion race as the only event in the first 13 Olympic games. Coreobus of Elis, a cook, was the victor in the Stadion race in 776 B.C. and thus the first recorded Olympic victor.

   2001, Edward Seldon Sears, Running Through the Ages, McFarland & Company, →ISBN, page 26

   Synonyms: furlong, stade, stadium

2. Synonym of stadium (“Ancient Greek racecourse”).

   Nor can we think of these buildings as minor architectural incidents when we learn that the stadion at Athens seated between forty and fifty thousand people.

   1927, Matlack Price, The ABC of Architecture, New York, N.Y.: E. P. Dutton & Company, page 131

   4 more examples

   The stadion did not suffice for the races of horses and chariots which had been favorites with the Greeks since the Trojan war. In such early ages, any goal chosen in the plain was sufficient, like the oak-trunk mentioned by Homer; but it could not have been long before the need was manifest of a sloping stand for the spectators and an enclosure for the contestants, and thus the hippodrome, the race-course, was developed similarly to the smaller stadion.

   1882, Franz von Reber, translated by Joseph Thacher Clarke, History of Ancient Art, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], pages 17–18

   […] to my mind, that honor which a man attains by the wealth that allows him to buy the speediest horses and hire the most skilful drivers, compares poorly with the honor he wins who descends naked into the stadion and conquers by the strength of his muscles, the cunning of his brain, and the courage of his heart.

   1896, Duffield Osborne, “A Day at Olympia”, in Scribner’s Magazine, volume XIX, number 50, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons; London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co. Limited, page 436, column 1

   In the Hellenistic period, the town-centres in the southern part of Illyria were further hellenized and, like Byllis (southern Albania), equipped with public buildings such as temples, stadions and theatres, in addition to agoras, peristyles, etc. (Ceka 1985a).

   1993, Per Bilde, editor, Centre and Periphery in the Hellenistic World, Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, →ISBN, page 98

   In addition, only a small number of cities (and almost no small cities) present evidence for the repair or adaptation of public buildings (i.e. agorai, theatres, odeia, stadions, aqueducts, and baths) during the Early Roman Imperial period.

   2023, Dean Peeters, Shaping Regionality in Socio-Economic Systems: Late Hellenistic – Late Roman Ceramic Production, Circulation, and Consumption in Boeotia, Central Greece (c. 150 BC–AD 700) (Roman and Late Antique Mediterranean Pottery; 18), Oxford, Oxon: Archaeopress, →ISBN, pages 58–59

   Synonyms: stadium