Note 357 — Chapter VI · SOME REMARKS ON THE COMPARATIVE GEOGRAPHY OF THE WESTERN AND NORTHERN PARTS OF ASIA MINOR.

It appears to have been very customary with the Asiatic Greeks to make their stadia circular at both ends. Examples exist at Magnesia ad Mæandrum, Tralles, Aphrodisias, Laodiceia ad Lycum, and Pergamum. At Magnesia, Tralles, Sardes, and Pergamum, the theatre is placed on one side of the stadium thus,

Under the Romans the stadium was sometimes converted into an amphitheatre, by building a curved wall across its breadth, so as to form with one of the circular ends a circle or oval. An inscription at Laodiceia, boasting of such a pitiful conversion of the stadium at that place, has been published by Chandler: and Pococke remarked the remains of a similar operation in the stadium of Ephesus. It appears from Strabo that there was an amphitheatre at Nysa: and there is one still existing at Pergamum; the latter is a building separate from the theatro-stadium.