When was the last time that you were at a stadium to cheer up for your favourite sport team or athlete or to watch a concert or another entertainment performance?
Stadiums are, indeed, quite fascinating places as on one hand they could unite people from different origin and status, yet on another could also turn best friends into temporary rivals.
Since ancient times, the stadium was a holly place. Its story starts in 8th century BC Ancient Greece with the first Olympic Games. The first Olympia took venue in a U shaped track surrounded by a stone stand with two separate entrances for judges and spectators. For over a century the only sport event at the ancient Greek Olympic festival was the race that comprised one length of that U track, which was equal to the Greek length measure of one stadion. With other words, the first Olympic athletes raced a stadion on the stadium. (The Pentathlon was introduced in only 708BC)
The earliest two written references in the English language come both from 14th century, with the first one from an English Bible, where the Greek stadion is defined as: “a measure of length, a race-course, a running track, the track at Olympia”. As far as the length of a stadion, comes the second written reference from a well-known to our readers source – John Trevisa. In his English translation of the 1398 early encyclopaedia De Proprietatibus Rerum (On the Properties of Things), Travisa gave the length of a stadium as: “one eight part of a mile”.
Though it was actually the later Roman equivalent measure of one stadium to be exacted to one eight of the mile and to be the historic base of the later adopted imperial unit of one furlong, 660 feet.
Apparently the Roman stadium originated from the Greek stadion, yet following the exact etymology of the word – it came from the Greek stadios (fixed) through the Latin stadia, a plural of stadium to name the Greek measure of one stadion.
With the first written evidences to refer to stadium, instead of a stadion, coming from another well familiar to our readers contributor to the English language –Philemon Holland. In his translations from the first years of the 17th century: “A Stadium or Furlong make of our paces 125…..Stadium, a race or space of ground, containing 625 feet.”
It is an interesting fact that the stadium which hosted the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 was reconstructed from the remains of the ancient Greek Panathenaic Stadium, which was built in 6th century BC and reconstructed couple of times to be completed in marble during 4th century BC and to host the impressive 50 000 seated spectators by 140BC.
Yet the most legendary stadium for British spectators is not the White City Stadium, originally known as The Great Stadium, which hosted most of the sport events from the first Olympic Games to be hold in England in 1908, but is the heart of the football – the Wembley Stadium. And most would fully agree with 1928 Times that: “It would be difficult to imagine a more impressive enclosure than the Stadium [sc. Wembley Stadium] for the holding of the greatest football festival of the year. “.
