The competitors had to strip naked for the athletic contests, this being a characteristic feature of the Greek games, obligatory on all without distinction of rank. There were games for boys as well as for men, and the celebrations, which at first were confined to a single day, extended ultimately to five days. The women had a festival of their own, with games for girls; but at the ordinary games married women were not allowed to be present. At the same time there was very little coarseness or cruelty about them, compared with a Roman gladiatorial exhibition or a Spanish bull-fight--except in the _pancratium_, a combination of wrestling and boxing, in which the combatants were allowed to get the better of one another by any means in their power, provided they did not make use of any weapon, which was forbidden in all the contests. The conflict was sometimes attended with a fatal result. Pausanias mentions a case of this kind in which a dead man was proclaimed victor, and crowned with the olive wreath. The stadium or race-course can be distinctly traced north-east of the Altis. The two parallel grooves in the stone pavement at the starting-point, the one a few inches in front of the other, were evidently intended to give the runner a secure footing. The course was 600 feet long, which became a recognised measure of distance, as the English furlong was derived from the length of a furrow. But the double race was soon introduced, which accounts for there being similar grooves at the other end, where the seats for the judges were, as the start would then have to be made from that end. In the same place you can also trace the sockets, about four feet apart, in which were fixed the wooden posts that marked off the space for each of the runners, who could be accommodated to the number of twenty.