TO THE READER. I commit this little work upon the Hippodrome to both the learned and the unlearned in the Antiquities of Constantinople. From the former I ask, and am sure of, charitable and sympathetic judgment, even as they appreciate to the full the labour and difficulty through which one strives to plod his way to the truth concerning the past days of this ancient city. To the latter I trust its perusal may afford a pleasant hour, and above all a stimulus to study themselves this and kindred subjects, of which Constantinople is so suggestive and in which it is so rich. Edwin A. Grosvenor 1889