Hippodrome of Constantinople 1953–1976. Hippodrome of Constantinople The Hippodrome of Constantinople () was a circus that was the sporting and social centre of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire. Today it is a square named "Sultanahmet Meydanı" ("Sultan Ahmet Square") in the Turkish city of Istanbul, with a few fragments of the original structure surviving. The word "hippodrome" comes from the Greek "hippos" (), horse, and "dromos" (δρόμος), path or way. For this reason, it is sometimes also called "Atmeydanı" ("Horse Square") in Turkish. Horse racing and chariot racing were popular pastimes in the ancient world and hippodromes were common features of Greek
Original meaning of dictionaries. Contemporaneous dictionaries are of dubious value to an original "intent" inquiry, but of high value to an original "meaning" inquiry: we can establish what the words the Framers chose "meant", but that is not "necessarily" conclusive as to what they "intended" to say (consider for example, the law of unintended consequences). The theory was arguably pioneered and popularized by Justice Antonin Scalia; whether Scalia could take credit for inventing it, he remained one of its most forceful and high-profile proponents, although he was also accused of deviating from the method (he himself admitted that "in a crunch I