Stanhope, John Spencer: Olympia or topography illustrative of the actual state of the plain of Olympia and of the ruins of the city of Elis (London, 1824)

professes to give the exact dimensions of an existing Hippodrome. The same

seats of the spectators—the ditch into which the drivers who could noi
clear the post retired: surely all these points of difference in the view
taken of the same place, by men of die same school, will induce my
readers to agree with me in thinking that the Hippodrome is not to be
(bund in the state represented by the Count de Choiseul, but thai there i-<
here, as it appears to me there is in every pari of Olynipia. abundant room
for conjecture.

I willingly avail myself of M. Pouqueville's testimony as far as regards
the Count's supposed Aphesis, and I trust that my readers will feci
satisfied, that this miserable brick building is not the wonderful work,
as M. Pouqueville has termed it, the performance of Kleoitas the son of
Aristocles; I shall therefore feel it incumbent upon me to abstain from
any observations on the new destination which the Consul has assigned
to this building; and more particularly so, as lie merely gives it as his
private opinion. Like M. Pouqueville then, 1 shall leave it to the learned
to decide, whether they approve of these cells as " boxes for the Agonothets,
who were thus to be incrusted in a wall 70 feet in extent."

I shall also refrain from any remarks on the supposed position of the
Apltesis. The Plain of Olympia is fairly open to any conjectures which
travellers may he inclined to form, and it is to render it still more open
to such conjectures, by placing it as it. were within the reach of the