The Stadium and the Gymnasium
The Stadium and the Gymnasium, located south of the Hierothyseion, are among the most impressive architectural complexes in terms of preservation. The northern horseshoe-shaped section of the Stadium comprises 18 tiers of seating with 18 rows of seats, separated by staircases. It is surrounded by Doric colonnades, most of whose columns remain in their original positions. The northern colonnade (10 m wide) is double, while the eastern and western ones are single (7 m wide). These housed the city’s Gymnasium, which formed a unified architectural complex with the Stadium.
The western colonnade does not extend to the end of the track but is interrupted over a length of 110 m and connects to a rectangular, Doric-style peristyle atrium (30 meters on each side) that housed the Palestra, along with the baths and the classrooms and living quarters for the adolescents during their three-year training. The importance of youth education and athletics for Messene’s society is evidenced, among other things, by the magnificent architectural complex of the Gymnasium, the Stadium, and the Palestra, which hosted the adolescent program—an institution that served members of the upper social classes of Messene as well as those from cities throughout the Messinian region: Asine, Kolonides, Methoni, Pylos, Kyparissia, and Thuria.
The gymnasiums were not intended solely for physical exercise; rather, they were, in general, the schools of the Greek world, where reading, writing, arithmetic, geometry, literature, and other subjects, in order to prepare young citizens physically and intellectually before they joined the ranks of adulthood. During the Hellenistic period, they became bustling centers of public life in the city and venues for exhibiting important works of art, as evidenced by recent findings from the Gymnasium of Messene. In addition to the aforementioned marble statues of gods and heroes—protectors of youth—a multitude of bronze statues, primarily of Gymnasium directors, benefactors of the city, and men of learning flanked the buildings, as the surviving inscribed pedestals inform us, set among the columns of the western portico, while numerous lists of adolescents recorded by tribe were found inscribed on the jambs and columns of the western portico of the Gymnasium and the Palaestra.
The inscriptions, architectural elements, and sculptures found undoubtedly belong to the deities who were the protectors of adolescence and the Gymnasium. The colossal cult statue of Heracles, although fragmented—likely by early Christians (5th–6th centuries AD)—which is also depicted on a coin from the time of Geta—preserves several characteristic fragments sufficient to classify it as belonging to the Farnese Hercules type, as well as a label bearing the names of its creators, Apollonius and his son Demetrius of Alexandria in Egypt, known from other signed works of theirs in Messene. A wide street leading from the Asclepieion to the western stoa of the Gymnasium ends at a monumental four-column Doric propylon. During the building’s final phase of use, in the 4th century AD, the stadium was used as an arena for gladiatorial combats and wild-beast fights—spectacles that were very popular in the Greek East, as well as in Rome.
