Boys and Their Balls - Part 1

 Greece and Rome

It seems that boys have always loved to play with their balls.  Baseball, football, basketball ...  The ancient Egyptians had a kind of ball game, as did the ancient Chinese.  But today we're going to look at the ancient Greeks and Romans.

This Greek marble relief from 510-500 BC shows a bunch of athletes, naked as Greek athletes always were, playing a ball game.  The game has not been identified, but it seems to involve two teams, and the player on the left is holding a baseball-sized ball.  

This carving from 400-375 BC in the Archaeological Museum, Athens, shows a player of a game called episkyros.  He's balancing a soccer-like ball on his thigh, perhaps for practice.  Episkyros was a game played with two teams, and players could use both hands and feet to move the ball, like rugby or American football.  It was immensely popular in Sparta, and it could get quite violent.

Here's another Greek ball game called keretízein depicted in a relief from c. 600 BC.  It looks like some kind of field hockey.

This statue in the Louvre, Paris, was found in Corinth, Greece, dating from the 3rd century BC.  Sometimes it takes something like this – a guy throwing a ball – to remind us that people back then were really just like us.

This picture shows a Roman game called trigon.  This is a drawing of a fresco in the Baths of Trajan; the original is lost.  In trigon, three or more players rapidly threw balls to each other, using one hand to throw and the other to catch.  From the picture, I count 5 balls (possibly 6), 4 of which are in the air.  It seems to have been not so much a competitive sport as a test of skill, with elements of juggling.

The Romans also had a competitive team sport called harpastum that was similar to the Greek game episkyros.

This is a mosaic in the Baths of Porta Marina in Ostia, near Rome, dating from c. 140 AD.  It depicts a bunch of mostly naked Roman athletes. 

But the thing of greatest interest is in the center of the mosaic.  Below a table we see a ball that looks almost exactly like a modern soccer ball.  Another reminder that they really weren't so different from us.