Kinda long, sorry. Ok, so now we are standing on the athletic course of the stadium of Perge. And I must say this must have been one pretty damn intimidating sight when it was alive because it is still amazing even now. When I was there I did some quick math and calculated 6,000 people could be sitting there. I guess I didn't count that people didn't have our fat American asses back then! In fact by counting the wear patterns on the bench seating it has been found that the stadium seated 12,000. And right next door was a theatre that seated 15,000 running shows at the same time. And given the huge open areas these structures were in, you can easily image 30,000 to 35,000 people packed in this entertainment complex. Now a football stadium for an average size American or Canadian city is about 45-50,000. So we are talking a very sizable amount of hoopla going on in Perge! Now let's take a look at what is going on here. See that opening dead center at ground level? (Enlarge the image, darn it.) And remember those vaults in the previous slide? Well that opening leads into one of those vaults - those are the entrances to the stadium. Each vault supports a bank of seats and there are 25 of them in a long U-shaped structure. Each vault has 12 long benches. You can see that between the vaults there are a set of stairs. Now doesn't that look just like your typical football stadium? (Whichever side of the pond you're on)Isn't that amazing? So you may think you wormed your way past the huckster vendors occupying the outer vaults only to be dumped right onto the "playing" field. Right there in the dust and stench and such forth with all the "athletes." But you would be wrong. Look to the far left and you will see a row of rocks three layers deep. And if you look just to right of center you will see that row again. That is the remains of a corridor that ran right around the inner most bank of seats, protecting the spectators from the "players." So you came through the entrance into a corridor, then you turned right or left and made your way to the flight of stairs and on up to your seats. Genius. Ok, not over yet. And this is something Mikerson alluded to in the previous photo where he said he could imagine a road up top. Well it's too narrow for a road Mike. But what if you got seated and you spotted Uncle Kornos a few sections over and you wanted to see him to brag about the latest slave girl you had acquired? (Perhaps from a huckster in the vault you just came through.)Well it's kind of a hassle to go all the way down again and try to work your way across. Unless of course you used the other covered corridor; the one around the top rim of the stadium! Indeed look to the top left just below what appears to be a cliff. That small pile of rubble is the remains of the topmost covered corridor that encircled the structure. There is also a small bit on the extreme right. Genius again. Wow, talk about how far we have actually come since those times. Ha! Those Roman engineers had a heck of a lot of things figured out that we just take for granted as being modern. Oh, and finally. That cliff? Not a cliff. It's actually a few hundred meters back from the stadium and it's a wall. A defensive wall. That is part of the lower city wall built by the Romans in about the 3rd century C.D. The stadium as I said previously was built in about 50 C.D. That means that for some 250 years after the entertainment centers were built there were no city walls. And the story of the wall is coming up next. Previous Perge

"Step right up"