Abstract
EXCAVATIONS AT THE HIPPODROME, CONSTANTINOPLE.—Mr. S. Casson in Discovery for March surveys the progress which has been made in the excavation of the Hippodrome at Constantinople in the two seasons since work was first begun. His task was complicated by the fact that the dimensions of the building were entirely unknown, and estimates by experts of its extent varied by hundreds of feet. All that was left visible were the three monuments down the centre, one of them the bronze serpent column which celebrated the Greek victory over the Persians at Plataea in 479 B.C., and was brought from Delphi by Constantine. It is interesting to note that an examination of these three monuments, of which two, the Column of Constantine Porphyrogenitus and the Serpent Column proved to have been used as fountains, revealed that the spina or dividing wall, which, it had been held, must run down the centre of the Hippodrome and upon which the monuments were supposed to stand, had no existence. In the Sphendone, the substructure at the end of the building, which was originally used for storing apparatus and animals for the games, were found twenty-five chambers, each opening out of a wide corridor which ran the length of the building. These in later and more troubled time were converted into cisterns for storing the water-supply, a purpose for which part is still used. The excavations here made it possible to determine the width of the building as 117-5 metres. Trial excavations to determine the length, brought to light a building which is probably the Baths of Zeuxippos. The total length was found to be 480 metres. A Turkish wall composed almost entirely of marble fragments from the Hippodrome furnished material from which it has been possible to reconstruct a general idea of what the Hippodrome looked like.
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Research Items. Nature 121, 513–515 (1928). https://doi.org/10.1038/121513a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/121513a0