TOYS, SPORTS, AND PASTIMES.
Having described, as far as possible, the management of infants and
young children, it may not be uninteresting to notice briefly their
toys, sports, and pastimes; for, though children have been
substantially the same in all ages and countries, the forms of their
amusements have been infinitely varied, and where they have resembled
each other it is not the less instructive to note that resemblance.
The ancients[455] have, however, bequeathed us but little information
respecting the fragile implements wherewith the happiness of the
nursery was in great part erected. Even respecting the recreations
which succeeded and amused the leisure of boys our materials for
working out a picture are scanty, so that we must content ourselves
with little more than an outline. Nevertheless, though the accounts
they have transmitted to posterity are meagre, they attached much
importance to the subject itself; so that the greatest legislators and
philosophers condescended to make regulations respecting it. Thus
Plato, with a view of generating a profound reverence for ancient
national institutions, forbade even the recreations of boys to be
varied with reckless fickleness; for the habit of innovation once
introduced into the character would ever after continue to influence
it, so that they who in boyhood altered their sports without reason,
would without scruple in manhood extend their daring hands to the laws
and institutions of their country.[456]
Footnote 455:
Plato had the utmost faith in the power of education over both mind
and body; but his system embraced much more than is usually
comprehended under the term, even taking charge of the infant before
its birth, and immediately afterwards, in the hope of wisely
regulating its physical developement. As the child grows most during
the first five years, its size in the following twenty being seldom
doubled, most care, he thought, should then be taken that the great
impulses of nature be not counteracted. Much food is then consumed,
with very little exercise; hence the multitude of deaths in infancy
and diseases in after-life, of which the seeds are then sown. For
this reason he would encourage the violent romping and sports of
children, that the excess of nourishment may be got rid of. De Legg.
vii. t. viii. p. 2. seq.
Footnote 456:
Plat, de Legg. vii. t. viii. p. 21. seq.
Amongst the Hellenes the earliest toy consisted, as in most other
countries, of the rattle, said to be the invention of the philosopher
Archytas.[457] To this succeeded balls of many colours,[458] with
little chariots, sometimes purchased at Athens in the fair held during
the feast of Zeus.[459] The common price of a plaything of this kind
would appear to have been an obolos. The children themselves, as
without any authority might with certainty be inferred, employed their
time in erecting walls with sand,[460] in constructing little
houses,[461] in building and carving ships, in cutting carts or
chariots out of leather, in fashioning pomegranate rinds into the
shape of frogs,[462] and in forming with wax a thousand diminutive
images, which pursued afterwards during school hours subjected them
occasionally to severe chastisement.[463]
Footnote 457:
Aristot. Polit. viii. 6. 1.
Footnote 458:
Dion. Chrysost. Nat. viii. p. 281.
Footnote 459:
Aristoph. Nub. 862. sqq. et Schol. Rav. in loc. Cf. Suid. v. Ἁμαξὶς,
t. i. p. 194. b. Pollux, x. 168.
Footnote 460:
Damm. v. Ἄθυρμα.
Footnote 461:
Lucian. Hermot. § 33.
Footnote 462:
Aristoph. Nub. 877. sqq. et Schol.
Footnote 463:
Lucian. de Somn. § 2.
Another amusement which the children of Hellas shared with their
elders was that afforded by puppets,[464] which were probably an
invention of the remotest antiquity. Numerous women appear to have
earned their livelihood by carrying round from village to village
these ludicrous and frolicsome images, which were usually about a
cubit in height, and may be regarded as the legitimate ancestors of
Punch and Judy. By touching a single string, concealed from the
spectators, the operator could put her mute performers in action,
cause them to move every limb in succession, spread forth the hands,
shrug the shoulders, turn round the neck, roll the eyes, and appear to
look at the audience.[465] After this, by other contrivances within
the images, they could be made to go through many humorous evolutions
resembling the movements of the dance. These exhibitors, frequently of
the male sex, were known by the name of Neurospastæ. This art passed,
together with other Grecian inventions, into Italy, where it was
already familiar to the public in the days of Horace, who, in speaking
of princes governed by favourites, compares them to puppets in the
hands of the showman.
“Tu, mihi qui imperitas, aliis servis miser; atque
Duceris, ut nervis alienis mobile lignum.”[466]
Footnote 464:
Buleng. de Theat. l. i. c. 36. sqq. Muret. ad Plat. Rep. p. 645.
Eustath. in Odyss. δ. p. 176. Mount. Not. ad Dem. Olynth. ii. § 5.
Perizon. ad Æl. Var. Hist. viii. 7. See also the article Marionnette
in the Encyclopédie Française; and Caylus, Rec. d’Antiq. t. vi. p.
287. t. iv. pl. 80. no. i.
Footnote 465:
Aristot. de Mund. c. 6. translated by Apuleius, p. 20. Herod. ii.
48. See Comment. ad Poll. vii. 189. Duport. ad Theophr. Char. p.
308. This juggler having, for his ill behaviour, been driven from
Athens, flew to Philip, with whom such persons were always in
favour. Dem. Olynth. i. § 7.
Footnote 466:
Sat. ii. 7. 81. seq. Plerumque simulacra de ligno facta nervis
moventur.—Vet. Schol.
A very extraordinary puppet, in the form of a silver skeleton, was,
according to Petronius Arbiter,[467] exhibited at the court of Nero;
for, like the Egyptians, this imperial profligate appears to have been
excited to sensual indulgences by the remembrance of the grave: “Let
us eat and drink,” cried he, “for tomorrow we die.” The skeleton being
placed upon the table, in the midst of the tyrant’s orgies, threw its
limbs strangely about, and bent its form into various attitudes with
wonderful flexibility, which having performed once and again, and then
suddenly ceasing to move, the master of the feast exclaimed, “Alas,
alas! what a mere nothing is man! Like unto this must we all be when
Orcus shall have borne us hence. Therefore let us live while enjoyment
is in our power.” But to return to the children of Hellas. Among the
earliest sports of the Greek boy was whipping the bembyx or top,[468]
which would appear to have been usually practised in those open spaces
occurring at the junction of several roads:—
“Where three ways meet there boys with tops are found,
That ply the lash and urge them round and round.”[469]
Sometimes also, as with us, they spun their tops with cord. The
amusement is thus described by Tibullus:[470]
“Namque agor, ut per plana citus tota verbere turben,
Quem celer assuetâ versitat arte puer.”
Footnote 467:
Satyric. p. 80. Helenop. 1610. Wouwer. Anim. p. 418. Erhard. Symbol.
p. 611. Plut. Conv. Sept. Sap. ch. 2.—A story is told of an Ionian
juggler who proceeded to Babylon to perform what he deemed a
wonderful feat before the Great King, and the feat was this: fixing
a long point of steel on a wall, and retiring to a considerable
distance, he threw at it a number of soft round pellets of dough,
with so nice an aim that every one of them was penetrated, the last
pellet driving back the others. Max. Tyr. Diss. xix. p. 225. Anim.
ad Poll. vii. 189. p. 532.
The hoop, too, so familiar to our own schoolboys, formed one of the
playthings of Hellenic children. It was sometimes made of bronze,
about three feet in diameter,[471] and adorned with little spherical
bells and movable rings, which jingled as it rolled. The instrument
employed to urge
“the rolling circle’s speed,”
as Gray expresses it, in his reminiscences of the Eton play-ground,
was crooked at the point, and called a plectron: its exact
representation may any day, in the proper season, be seen in the
streets of London impelling forward the iron hoop of our own children.
The passages of ancient authors, in which mention of the trochos
occurs, appear to have been imperfectly understood before the
discovery of a basso-rilievo, in marble, on the road from Rome to
Tivoli, afterwards removed to the vineyard of the Cardinal Alexander
Albani. On certain engraved gems also, in the cabinet of Stosch, are
several representations of boys playing at hoop, where the trochos in
some cases reaches to the waist, in others to the breast, and where
the child is very small up to the chin. It has been conjectured by
Winkelmann,[472] that a circle represented in one of the paintings of
Herculaneum was no other than an ancient trochos. Rolling the hoop
formed a part of the exercises of the palæstra, which were performed
even by very young children. Thus we find the nurse describing the
sons of Medeia returning from playing at hoop the very day that they
were slain by their mother.[473] This amusement has been described
briefly by the Roman poets. Thus Martial:[474]—
“Garrulus in laxo cur annulus orbe vagatur
Cedat, et argutis obvia turba trochis.”
Footnote 468:
Schol. Aristoph. Vesp. 1517. Diog. Laert. i. 4. 8. Cf. Hyde
Nerdilud. p. 259.
Footnote 469:
Callim. Ep. i. 9. seq. p. 180.
Footnote 470:
I. 5. 3.
Footnote 471:
Cf. Caylus, Rec. D’Antiq. t. vi. 318. seq.
Footnote 472:
Descr. des Pierres Grav. du Cab. de Stosch. 452. seq.
Footnote 473:
Eurip. Mod. 45. et Sch.
Footnote 474:
L. xiv. Ep. 169.
Propertius[475] notices the crooked form of the plectron, or clavis:—
“Increpat et versi clavis adunca trochi.”
Horace[476] likewise alludes to the game:—
“Indoctusque pilæ discive trochive quiescit.”
This poet clearly informs us that the Romans received the game from
the Greeks:[477]—
“Ludere doctior,
Seu Græco jubeas trocho,
Seu malis vetita legibus alea.”
Another less innocent amusement was[478] spinning goldchafers, which
appears to have afforded the Greek urchins the same delight as
tormenting cockchafers does their successors of the north. This
species of beetle making its appearance when the apple-trees were in
bloom, was therefore called _Melolanthe_, or apple-blossom. Having
caught it, and tied a linen thread about its feet, it was let loose,
and the fun was to see it move in spiral lines through the air as it
was twisted by the thread.[479]
Footnote 475:
iii. 12.
Footnote 476:
Ars Poet. 380. where the ancient scholiast seems doubtful whether
the trochus was a hoop or a top:—“Trochus dicitur turben, qui
flagello percutitur, et in vertiginem rotatur, aut rota quam
currendo pueri scuticâ vel virgâ regunt.”
Footnote 477:
Carm. iii. 24. 56. sqq.
Footnote 478:
On the games at present practised in Greece, see Dodwell, ii. 37.
sqq.; and Douglas, Essay on certain points of resemblance between
the Anc. and Mod. Greeks, p. 127. sqq.
Footnote 479:
Poll. ix. 124.
It was the practice among the children of Greece, when the sun
happened to be obscured by a cloud, to exclaim, “Ἔξεχ᾽ ὦ φίλ᾽
ἥλιε!”—“Come forth, beloved sun!” Strattis makes allusion to this
custom in a fragment of his Phœnissæ:—
“Then the god listened to the shouting boys,
When they exclaimed, ‘Come forth, beloved sun!’”[480]
It is fortunate that our English boys have no such passion for
sunshine; otherwise, as Phœbos Apollo hides his face for months
together in this blessed climate, we should be in a worse plight than
Dionysos among the frogs of Acheron, when his passion for Euripides
led him to pay a visit to Persephone. In some parts of the country,
however, the children have a rude distich which they frequently bawl
in chorus, when in summer-time their sports are interrupted by a
long-continued shower:—
“Rain, rain, go to Spain;
Fair weather, come again.”
Footnote 480:
Poll. ix. 123.
The Muïnda was our “Blindman’s-buff,” “Blind Hob,” “Hobble ’em-blind,”
and “Hood-man-blind,” in which, as with us, a boy moved about with his
eyes bandaged, spreading forth his hands, and crying “Beware!” If he
caught any of those who were skipping around him, the captive was
compelled to enact the blind-man in his stead. Another form of the
game was for the seers to hide, and the blind man to grope round till
he found them; the whole probably being a rude representation of
Polyphemos in his cave searching for the Greeks who had blinded him. A
third form was, for the bystanders to strike or touch the blindfolded
boy until he could declare who had touched him, when the person
indicated took his place. To this the Roman soldiers alluded when they
blindfolded our Saviour and smote him, and cried, “Prophesy who struck
thee.”[481] In the Kollabismos,[482] the Capifolèt of the French, one
person covered his eyes with his own hands, the other then gave him a
gentle blow, and the point was, for the blindfolded man to guess with
which hand he had been stricken. The Χαλκὴ Μυῖα,[483] or Brazen Fly,
was a variety of Blindman’s-buff, in which a boy, having his eyes
bound with a fillet, went groping round, calling out, “I am seeking
the Brazen Fly.” His companions replied, “You may seek, but you will
not find it”—at the same time striking him with cords made of the
inner bark of the papyros; and thus they proceeded till one of them
was taken. Apodidraskinda (“hide and seek,” or “whoop and holloa!”)
was played much as it is now. One boy shut his eyes, or they were kept
closed for him by one of his suspicious companions, while the others
went to hide. He then sallied forth in search of the party who lay
concealed, while each of them endeavoured to gain the post of the
seeker; and the first who did this turned him out and took his place.
Footnote 481:
This has been observed by Hemsterhuis, ad Poll. t. vi. p. 1173,
where his commentary alone can render the text intelligible.—Cf.
Matthew, xxvi. 68. Mark, xiv. 64. Luke, xxii. 65.
Footnote 482:
“Jeu de la main chaude.” Steph. Thes. Ling. Græc. v. Κολλαβισμός.
Footnote 483:
Hyde, Hist. Nerdilud. p. 266.
Another game was the Ephedrismos, in which a stone called the Dioros
was set up at a certain distance, and aimed at with bowls or stones.
The one who missed took the successful player upon his back, and was
compelled to carry him about blindfolded, until he went straight from
the standing-point to the Dioros. This latter part of the game has
been described by several ancient authors, under the appellation of
Encotyle, though they are rightly, by Hesychius,[484] considered as
different parts of the same sport. The variety called Encotyle,—the
“Pick-back” or “Pick-a-back,” of English boys, consisted in one lad’s
placing his hands behind his back, and receiving therein the knees of
his conqueror, who, putting his fingers over the bearer’s eyes, drove
him about at his pleasure. This game was also called the Kubesinda and
Hippas,[485] though, according to the conjecture of Dr. Hyde, the
latter name signified rather our game of “Leap-frog,”—the “mazidha” of
the Persians, in which a number of boys stooped down with the hands
resting on the knees, in a row, the last going over the backs of all
the others, and then standing first.
Footnote 484:
In v. Ἐφεδρίζειν.
Footnote 485:
Hyde, Hist. Nerdilud. p. 241.
In the game called Chytrinda, in English[486] “Hot-cockles,” “Selling
of pears,” or “How many plumbs for a penny,” one boy sat on the
ground, and was called the chytra or pot, while his companions,
forming themselves into a ring, ran round, plucking, pinching, or
striking him as they went. If he who enacted the chytra succeeded in
seizing upon one of the buffeters the captive took his place. Possibly
it was during this play that a mischievous foundling, contrary to
rule, poking, as he ran round, the boy in the centre with his foot,
provoked from the latter the sarcastic inquiry, “What! dost thou kick
thy mother in the belly?” alluding to the circumstance of the former
having been exposed in a chytra.[487] Another form of the Chytrinda
required the lad in the centre to move about with a pot on his head,
where he held it with his left hand, while the others struck him, and
cried out, “Who has the pot?” To which he replied, “I Midas,”
endeavouring all the while to reach some one with his foot,—the first
whom he thus touched being compelled to carry round the pot in his
stead.[488]
Footnote 486:
Hyde, Hist. Nerdilud. p. 263.
Footnote 487:
Sch. Aristoph. Thesm. 509. But see above, p. 122.
Footnote 488:
Poll. ix. 114.
Another game, peculiar to girls, was the Cheli Chelone, or “the
tortoise,” of which I remember no representative among English
pastimes. It somewhat resembled the Chytrinda of the boys. For one
girl sat on the ground and was called the tortoise, while her
companions, running round, inquired “Tor-tortoise what art thou doing
there in the middle?” “Spinning wool,” replied she, “the thread of the
Milesian woof;” “And how, continued they, was thy son engaged when he
perished?” “He sprang from his white steeds into the sea.”[489] If
this was, as the language would intimate, a Dorian play, I should
consider it a practical satire on the habits of the other Hellenic
women, who remained like tortoises at home, carding and spinning,
while their sons engaged in the exercises of the palæstra or the
stadium. Possibly, also, originally the name may have had some
connection with καλλιχέλωνος “beautiful tortoise,” the figure of this
animal having been impressed on the money of the Peloponnesians; in
fact, in a fragment of the Helots of Eupolis, we find the obolos
distinguished by the epithet of καλλιχέλωνος.[490]
Footnote 489:
Poll. ix. 125.
Footnote 490:
Id. ix. 74. Cf. Suid. v. Καλλικολώνη t. i. p. 1359. c. Meurs. De
Lud. Græc. p. 41.
The Kynitinda was so called from the verb κυνέω to kiss, as appears
from Crates in his “Games,” a play in which the poet contrived to
introduce an account of this and nearly all the other juvenile
pastimes. The form of the sport being little known, the learned have
sometimes confounded it with a kind of salute called the chytra in
antiquity, and the “Florentine Kiss” in modern Italy, in which the
person kissing took the other by the ears. Giraldi[491] says he
remembers, when a boy, that his father and other friends, when kissing
him, used sometimes to take hold of both his ears, which they called
giving a “Florentine kiss.” He afterwards was surprised to find that
this was a most ancient practice, commemorated both by the Greek and
Latin authors. It obtained its name, as he conjectures, from the
earthen vessel called chytra, which had two handles usually laid hold
of by persons drinking out of it, as is still the practice with
similar utensils in Spain. This writer mentions a present sent from
the peninsula to Leo X, consisting of a great number of chytræ of red
pottery, if we may so call them, of which he himself obtained one.
Crates, as Hemsterhuis[492] ingeniously supposes, introduced a wanton
woman playing at this game among the youths in order that she might
enjoy the kisses of the handsome.
Footnote 491:
Opp. ii. p. 880. Theocrit. v. 133. Wart.—Poll. x. 100.
Footnote 492:
Comment. ad Poll. t. vi. p. 1180.
The Epostrakismos[493] was what English boys call “Ducks and Drakes,”
and sometimes, among our ancestors at least, “A duck and a drake and a
white penny cake,” and was played with oyster-shells. Standing on the
shore of the sea at the Peiræeus, for example, they flung the shells
edgeways over the water so that they should strike it and bound
upwards again and again from its surface. The boy whose shell made
most leaps before sinking, won the game. Minucius Felix gives a very
pretty description of this juvenile sport. “Behold, he says, boys
playing in frolicsome rivalry with shells on the sea-shore. The game
consists in picking up from the beach a shell rendered light by the
constant action of the waves, and standing on an even place, and
inclining the body, holding the shell flat between the fingers, and
throwing it with the greatest possible force, so that it may rase the
surface of the sea or skim along while it moves with gentle flow, or
glances over the tops of the waves as they leap up in its track. That
boy is esteemed the victor whose shell performs the longest journey or
makes most leaps before sinking.”[494]
Footnote 493:
Poll. ix. 119.
Footnote 494:
Seber ad Poll. t. vi. p. 1188.
The Akinetinda was a contention between boys, in which some one of
them endeavoured to maintain his position unmoved. Good sport must
have been produced by the next game called Schœnophilinda, or “Hiding
the Rope.” In this a number of boys sat down in a circle, one of whom
had a rope concealed about his person, which he endeavoured to drop
secretly beside one of his companions. If he succeeded, the unlucky
wight was started like a hare round the circle, his enemy following
and laying about his shoulders. But on the other hand, if he against
whom the plot was laid detected it, he obtained possession of the rope
and enjoyed the satisfaction of flogging the plotter over the same
course.
The Basilinda[495] was a game in which one obtained by lot the rank of
king, and the vanquished, whether one or many, became subject to him,
to do whatever he should order. It passed down to the Christians, and
was more especially practised during the feast of the Epiphany. It is
commonly known under the name of Forfeits, and was formerly called
“One penny,” “One penny come after me,” “Questions and commands,” “The
choosing of king and queen on Twelfth night.” In the last-mentioned
sense it is still prevalent in France, where it is customary for
bakers to make a present to the families they serve, of a large cake
in the form of a ring in which a small kidney bean has been concealed.
The cake is cut up, the pieces are distributed to the company, and the
person who gets the bean is king of the feast. This game entered in
Greece likewise into the amusements of grown people, both men and
women, as well as of children, and an anecdote, connected with it, is
told of Phryne, who happened one day to be at a mixed party where it
was played. By chance it fell to her lot to play the queen; upon
which, observing that her female companions were rouged and lilied to
the eyes, she maliciously ordered a basin and towel to be brought in,
and that every woman should wash her face. Conscious of her own native
beauty, she began the operation, and only appeared the fresher and
more lovely. But alas for the others! When the anchusa, psimmuthion,
and phukos had been removed by the water, their freckled and coarse
skins exposed them to general laughter.[496]
Footnote 495:
Poll. ix. 110.
Footnote 496:
Galen. Protrept. § 10. Kühn. Compare the admirable note of
Hemsterhuis ad Poll. t. vi. p. 1066. seq.
The Ostrakinda was a game purely juvenile. A knot of boys having drawn
a line on the ground, separated into two parties. A small earthenware
disk or ostrakon, one side black with pitch, the other white, was then
produced, and each party chose a side, white or black. The disk was
then pitched along the line, and the party whose side came up was
accounted victorious, and prepared to pursue while the others turned
round and fled. The boy first caught obtained the name of the ass, and
was compelled to sit down, the game apparently proceeding till all
were thus caught and placed hors de combat. He who threw the ostrakon
cried, “night or day,” the black side being termed _night_, and the
opposite _day_. It was called the “Twirling of the ostrakon.” Plato
alludes to it in the Phædros.[497]
Footnote 497:
Poll. ix. 111. seq. Plat. Phæd. t. i. p. 29. seq. Bekk.
The Dielkustinda, “French and English,” was played chiefly in the
palæstra, and occasionally elsewhere. It consisted simply in two
parties of boys laying hold of each other by the hand, and pulling
till one by one the stronger had drawn over the weaker to their side
of the ground.
The Phryginda was a game in which, holding a number of smooth and
delicate fragments of pottery between the fingers of the left hand,
they struck them in succession with the right so as apparently to
produce a kind of music.[498]
Footnote 498:
Turneb. Advers. xxvii. 33. Poll. ix. 114. Comment. t. vi. p. 1178.
There was another game called Kyndalismos, played with short batons,
and requiring considerable strength and quickness of eye. A stick
having been fixed up-right in a loose moist soil, the business was to
dislodge it by throwing at it other batons from a distance; whence the
proverb, “Nail is driven out by nail, and baton by baton.”[499] A
person who played at this game was called by some of the Doric poets
Kyndalopactes.[500] A similar game is played in England, in which the
prize is placed upon the top of the upright stick. The player wins
when the prize falls without the hole whence the upright has been
dislodged.
Footnote 499:
Vid. Vatic. Append. Proverb. Cent. ii. prov. 12. et Ib. not. And.
Schotto. Kühn ad Poll. t. vi. p. 1190.
Footnote 500:
Meursius, Græc. Lud. p. 26. and after him Pfeiffer, Ant. Græc. iv.
p. 120. read κινδαλοπαίκτης, which Hemsterhuis observes is contrary
to the authority of the MSS.
The game of Ascoliasmos[501] branched off into several varieties, and
afforded the Athenian rustics no small degree of sport. The first and
most simple form consisted in hopping on one foot, sometimes in pairs,
to see which in this way could go furthest. On other occasions the
hopper undertook to overtake certain of his companions who were
allowed the use of both legs. If he could touch one of them he came
off conqueror. This variety of the game appears to have been the
Empusæ ludus of the Romans. “Scotch hoppers,” or “Fox to thy hole,” in
which boys, hopping on one leg, beat one another with gloves or pieces
of leather tied at the end of strings, or knotted handkerchiefs, as in
the _diable boîteux_ of the French. At other times victory depended on
the number of hops, all hopping together and counting their
springs,—the highest of course winning. But the most amusing variety
of the game was that practised during the Dionysiac festival of the
Askolia. Skins filled with wine or inflated with air, and extremely
well oiled, were placed upon the ground, and on these the shoeless
rustics leaped with one leg and endeavoured to maintain a footing,
which they seldom could on account of their slipperiness. However, he
who succeeded carried off the skin of wine as his prize.
Footnote 501:
Phurnutus, De Nat. Deorum, c. 30. p. 217. seq. Gale.—Poll. ix. 121.
Sch. Aristoph. Plut. 1130. Kust.—Meurs. Græc. Fer. p. 52; Græc.
Ludibunda, p. 6.
A game, evidently also of rustics, was the Trygodiphesis, Tantali
ludus, “Bobbing for cherries,” “Bob cherry,” in which something very
nice was thrown into a bowl of wine lees, which the performer, with
his hands behind his back, was to fish up with his lips. The fun was
to see the ludicrous figure he cut with his face daubed and
discoloured by the lees.
Phitta Maliades, Phitta Meliai, Phitta Rhoiai, “Hasten, nymphs!” may
be regarded as exclamations of encouragement uttered by Dorian girls,
when engaged in a race.[502]
Footnote 502:
Poll. ix. 127. with the note of Hemsterhuis.
Playing at ball was common, and received various names. Episkyros,
Phæninda, Aporraxis and Ourania. The first of these games was also
known by the names of the Ephebike and the Epikoinos. It was played
thus: a number of young men assembling together in a place covered
with sand or dust, drew across it a straight line, which they called
Skyros, and at equal distances, on either side, another line. Then
placing the ball on the Skyros, they divided into two equal parties,
and retreated each to their lines, from which they immediately
afterwards rushed forward to seize the ball. The person who picked it
up, then cast it towards the extreme line of the opposite party, whose
business it was to intercept and throw it back, and they won who by
force or cunning compelled their opponents to overstep the boundary
line.
Daniel Souter[503] contends that this was the English game of
football, into which perhaps it may, in course of time, have been
converted. This rough and, it must be confessed, somewhat dangerous
sport, originally, in all probability, introduced into this country by
the Romans, may still on Shrove Tuesday be witnessed in certain towns
of South Wales. The balls consist of bulls’ bladders protected by a
thick covering of leather, and blown tight. Six or eight are made
ready for the occasion, every window in the town is shut by break of
day, at which time all the youths of the neighbourhood assemble in the
streets. The ball is then thrown up in front of the town-hall, and the
multitude, dividing into two parts, strive with incredible eagerness
and enthusiasm to overcome their antagonists, each endeavouring to
kick the foot-ball to the other extremity of the town. In the struggle
severe kicks and wounds are given, and many fierce battles take place.
The ball sometimes mounts thirty or forty feet above the tops of the
highest houses and falls far beyond, or goes right over into the
gardens, whither it is immediately followed by a crowd of young men.
The sport is kept up all day, the hungry combatants recruiting their
strength from time to time by copious horns of ale, and an abundant
supply of the nice pancakes which the women sell in baskets at the
corner of every street. To view this sport, thousands of persons
assemble from all the country round, so that to the secluded
population of those districts it is in some sort what the battle in
the Platanistas was to the Spartans, or even what the Isthmian and
Nemean games were to the whole of Greece.
Footnote 503:
Palamedes, iii. 4. p. 207. Alex. ab Alex. iii. 21.
The Phæninda[504] is supposed to have received its name either from
its inventor, Phænides (called Phænestios in Athenæus[505] and the
Etymologicon Magnum), or from the verb Φενακίζειν[506] “to deceive,”
because, making as though they would throw at one person, they
immediately sent it at another, thus deluding the expectation of the
former. It appears at first to have been played with the small ball
called Harpaston, though the game with the large soft one may
afterwards perhaps have also been called Phæninda. The variety named
Aporraxis consisted in throwing the ball with some force against the
ground and repelling it constantly as it rebounded; he who did this
most frequently, winning. In the game called Ourania, the player,
bending back his body, flung up the ball with all his might into the
air; on which there arose a contention among his companions who should
first catch it in its descent, as Homer appears to intimate in his
description of the Phæacian sport. They likewise played at ball in the
modern fashion against a wall, in which the person who kept it up
longest, won, and was called king; the one who lost, obtained the name
of ass, and was constrained by the laws of the game to perform any
task set him by the king.[507]
Footnote 504:
Cf. Souter. Palam. iii. 3. p. 201.
Footnote 505:
Deipnosoph. i. 26.
Footnote 506:
Cf. Schweigh. ad Athen. t. vi. p. 248. seq.
Footnote 507:
Poll. ix. 106.
A game generally played in the gymnasia was the Skaperda. In this a
post was set up with a hole near the top and a rope passed through it.
Two young men then seized each one end of the rope, and turning their
back to the post exerted their utmost strength to draw their
antagonist up the beam. He who raised his opponent highest won.
Sometimes they tried their strength by binding themselves together,
back to back, and pulling different ways.
The Himanteligmos, “pricking the garter,” in Ireland “pricking the
loop,” was really an ingenious amusement. It consisted in doubling a
thong, and twisting it into numerous labyrinthine folds, which done,
the other party put the end of a peg into the midst in search of the
point of duplication. If he missed the mark the thong unwound without
entangling the peg; but if he dropped it into the right ring his peg
was caught and the game won. Hemsterhuis[508] supposes the Gordian
knot to have been nothing but a variety of the Himanteligmos. He
conjectures that the boys of Abdera were fond of this game, on which
account the sophisms of Democritus were called ἱμαντελικτεαὶ, and
hence probably a sophist, as one who twists words together, to _lash_
others, was called Himantelicteus.
Footnote 508:
Ad Poll. t. vi. p. 1186. sqq. Cf. Plut. Symp. i. 1.
Another game, not entirely confined to children, was the Chalkismos,
which consisted in twisting round rapidly on a board or table a piece
of money, and placing the point of the finger so dexterously on its
upper edge as to put a stop to its motion without permitting it to
fall. This was a favourite amusement of Phryne the hetaira, as
building houses of cards was of La Belle Stuart.[509] Some of these
sports were peculiar to the female sex,[510] as the Pentalitha, which
is still played by girls in some remote provinces of our island, where
it is called “Dandies.” The whole apparatus of the game consisted in
five astragals—knuckle bones—pebbles, or little balls, which, gathered
up rapidly, were thrown into the air and attempted to be caught in
falling on the back of the hand or between the slightly spread
fingers. If any fell it was allowable to pick them up, provided this
were done with the fingers of the same hand on which the other
astragals rested.[511] The girls of France, according to Bulenger,
still amuse themselves with the Pentalitha, there played with five
little glass balls, which are flung in the air and caught so
dexterously as seldom to fall either on the table or on the ground. I
have never, however, seen it played myself in that country.
Footnote 509:
Poll. ix. 118.
Footnote 510:
The game of astragals, properly so called, was common to both sexes
(Paus. vi. 24. 7), who saw in Elis one of the Graces, represented
with an astragal in her hand, while her two companions held the one
a rose, the other a branch of myrtle, symbolical of their
relationship to Aphrodite. The poets sometimes transfer these sports
of earth to the Olympian halls, where we find Eros and Ganymede
playing with golden astragals—Cf. Apollon. Rhod. iii. 117. seq. Cf.
Odyss. α. 107. Il. χ. 87. seq.
Footnote 511:
Poll. ix. 126.
The Astragalismos,[512] which by the Romans was denominated talorum or
taxillorum ludus, (by Hyde through the Greek πάσσαλος, derived from
the Hebræo-Punic Assila,) by the Arabs Ka’b or Shezn, by the Persians
Shesh-buzhûl bâzi, by the Turks Depshelìm, (played in their country
both by girls and boys,) by the French Garignon or Osselets, in
English “Cockall.”[513] In the game of astragals the Persians, as is
implied in the name given above, often use six bones while the Greeks
employed only four, which were thrown either on a table or on the
floor. According to Lucian,[514] the huckle bones were sometimes those
of the African gazelle.
Footnote 512:
Children, according to Lysander, were to be deceived with astragals,
and men with oaths.—Plut. Lysan. § 8.
Footnote 513:
Hyde, Hist. Talor. § 2. t. ii. p. 314.
Footnote 514:
Amor. § 16. Theoph. Char. c. 5. See Nixon. Acc. of Antiq. at Hercul.
Phil. Trans. vol. 50. pt. i. p. 88. Hyde. Hist. Talor. p. 137.
The several sides of the astragal or huckle bone had their character
expressed by numbers, and obtained separate names, which determined
the value of the throw.[515] Thus, the side showing the Monas was
called the Dog, the opposite side Chias, and the throw Chios. In
cockall as in dice there are neither twos nor fives. The highest
number, six, was called the Coan (συνορικὸς or ἑξίτης); the Dog or one
was called the Chian or dog-chance; to which the old proverb alluded
Κῶος πρὸς χῖον, six to one. To have the Dog turn up was to lose,
hence, perhaps, the phrase, “going to the dogs,” that is, playing a
losing game. The throw of eight was denominated Stesichoros, because
the poet’s tomb at Himera consisted of a perfect octagon. Among the
forty who succeeded to the thirty at Athens Euripides was one, and
hence, if the throw of the astragals amounted to forty points, they
bestowed upon it the name of Euripides. All animals in which the
astragal is found have it in the hough or pastern of the hind legs.
The τὸ πρανὲς, the gibbous side or blank, because it counts for
nothing; the τὸ κοῖλον, the hollow side or “put in;” the χῶα, the
tortuous side, "cockall," or “take all,” so called because it wins the
stake; the smooth side τα χῖα, “take half,” because of the money put
in, it wins half. Among the Greeks and Romans the _put in_ was called
trias, the blank tetras, the half-monas, and the cockall hexas.[516]
By the Arabs they are denominated the thief, the lamb, the wezeer, and
the sultan; by the Turks the robber, the ploughman, the kihaya, or the
dog, and the bey; by the Persians the robber, the rustic, the wezeer,
and the schah; by the Armenians the thief, the ploughman, the steward,
and the lord. The number of casts among the Greeks, according to
Eustathius, amounted to thirty-five.[517] Pliny[518] speaks of a work
of Polycletos representing naked boys playing at this game, and the
reader will probably remember the mutilated group in the British
Museum, in which a boy having evidently been beaten at astragals, is
biting in revenge the leg of his conqueror.
Footnote 515:
Hyde. Hist. Talor. p. 141. sqq. Poll. ix. 100.
Footnote 516:
Arist. Hist. Anim. ii. 2. p. 30. Bekk.
Footnote 517:
Meurs. Græc. Lud. p. 7.
Footnote 518:
xxxiv. 19. Vid. Calcagnin, Dissert. de Talis. J. Cammer. Comment. de
Utriusque Ling. c. 846.
To play at Odd or Even[519] was common; so that we find Plato
describing a knot of boys engaged in this game in a corner of the
undressing room of the gymnasium. There was a kind of divination by
astragals, the bones being hidden under the hand, and the one party
guessing whether they were odd or even. The same game was occasionally
played with beans, walnuts, or almonds, or even with money, if we may
credit Aristophanes, who describes certain serving-men playing at Odd
or Even with golden staters.[520] There was a game called Eis
Omillan,[521] in which they drew a circle on the ground, and, standing
at a little distance, pitched the astragals at it; to win consisting
in making them remain within the ring. Another form of the Eis Omillan
was to place a trained quail within a circle, on a table for example,
out of which the point was to drive it by tapping it with the middle
finger. If it reared at the blow, and retreated beyond the line, its
master lost his wager. The play called Tropa[522] was also generally
performed with astragals, which were pitched into a small hole, formed
to receive such things when skilfully thrown. The common acorn, and
fruit of the holm oak, were often substituted for astragals in this
game. The Ephentinda seems to have consisted in pitching an ostrakon
into a circle, so as to cause it to remain there. The Skeptinda
consisted in placing an ostrakon, or a piece of money, on the ground,
and pitching another at it so as to make it turn.[523]
Footnote 519:
Hyde, Hist. Nerdilud. p. 261.
Footnote 520:
Plut. 817. sqq. Cf. Sch. in loc.
Footnote 521:
Suid. et Hesych. in v. Poll. ix. 102. Cf. Meurs. Græc. Ludib. p. 69.
Footnote 522:
Cf. Meurs. de Lud. Græc. p. 61. Hesych. v. Τρόπα.
Footnote 523:
Poll. ix. 117.