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Walnuts

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

Girl’s and boy’s games
In ancient times both boys and girls used to pass their time playing with walnuts. Young people went always around with a small sachet full of them, and it was for this reason that nuts became a symbol of infancy. In an epithalamium composed by Catullus for one of his friend who, up to that moment had only be attracted by very young boys, the poet orders the young bridegroom’s lover to throw his nuts to the children who followed the wedding party. Now, with the arrival of the new bride the happy period of the young slave boyhood was finished for ever.
“Give the walnuts to the children you lazy concubine: Too long a time you have played with them”
Afterward this idea was confirmed by Persius when, to indicate that the childhood was concluded he used this phrase
“Having given up their walnuts”
In one of his short poem titled “ The walnuts”, Ovid describes the walnuts games: one of the most popular of these was called the “castella” (the castles). Playing it the children tried to launch a walnut and firmly place it on three others set very close together to form a basis (fig.1). If they succeeded in doing it, they won them. The game of the “castella” is represented in some bas-relief sculpture, the most beautiful of which is the one kept in the Vatican Museum. In this one the lively atmosphere of the party, the feelings of the players, their frame of mind, the attention with which they followed the game and the quarrels bursting among them are reproduced with great art.
The cold marble nearly succeed to make us hear the brisk discussions that arouse among the onlookers who, while waiting for their turn, are debating what had to be done and what the player is now doing. Luckily ther don’t succeed to divert his attention. The boy, with his face concentrated and strained is on the verge to launch his nut, and his friends all around him partecipate actively to the scene and evidently are very excited. One of them, although very interested in the game, didn’t fail to bring with him his sling: later one he will try to hit some innocent passer by or kill an ill-fated bird.
Among the onlookers certain boy, the ones who already played, keep at their feet their winnings. One of them very skilled or else very lucky is holding a small bag full of the walnuts he won moreover two other “castella”lay at his feet. Another player keep his winnings in a fold of his mantle. In the meantime a quarrel arise among two of the boys standing there and they are now pulling their hairs and hitting each other it is easy to anticipate that in some moments the atmosphere of the party with become very heated and will put in danger the hairs of all the children.
A group of five young women who stand nearby are probably the elder sisters of the boys we have just seen. They pass the time playing at “Castella” and are very concentrated in the game. It is evident that they are so accustomed to their brothers quarrels that they had no wish to intervene and save the locks of the two contenders. The girls are amusing themselves and only minding their game. If their young relatives wanted to scuffle this was the boys’s problem not their. One of the girl crouching is arranging on the floor the three walnuts that will fonction as the base of the “castella”. Another of the girls, sitting on a very low stool has in her hand the nut that must be launched and she gives it to the girl who has to play, contemporarily a fourth young woman brings a lot of nuts in the fold of her dress, while one of her friends is looking at the game.
There were also other games that could be played with walnuts, and all are described in Ovid’s poem. One consisted in putting a walnut on a slanted board and, giving a push to it, made it roll near the target. Another one was based in tracing on the ground a big Delta letter divided by lines parallel to its basis. The players set at a certain distance threw their nuts trying to reach the vertex of the Delta but without getting out of it. The game was won by the child who got nearer to its vertex. Always with the nuts one could play to the game of the “tropa” centering either a little hole dug in the soil or a jug put on it (fig.2).
The “tropa” game was nearly always played with walnuts, but also knuckle bones could be used. It was from the archaic times that people played with them and we have news of them used in the Homeric and Micenean times. At first real knuckle bones were used, but later on they were copied in bronze, lead, marble, clay and even in gold or ivory. There were usually contained in special elegant, luxurious objects decorated by well known painters. Children were very fond of knuckle bones, thus they were awarded to the best students. We have news of a boy who received 80 of them: he must have been either an incredibly intelligent child or a fabulous swot.
However with the knuckle bones people could play at different games. One of these was called “the circle”. In it all the players disposed themselves all around the circle and each one of them tried to hit its center. Playing this game the boy could also use his knuckle to hit and chase from their places the others that were in a winning position.
It was always with knuckle bones or small rounded stones that young girls and boys played a game called the “five stones”, a passtime still in use, apart from the fact that today nobody uses knuckle bones and that now the participants do it with coins or pebbles. For this game the contender launch in the air five small objects and try to take all of them on the back of his hand. If he succeded in this, he won the game. In some representations we see a crouching girl with her hand turned down and its fingers bent in a strained and innatural position
to prevent the knuckle bones from rolling to the ground. A girl friend standing before her, controls the result.

Bibliography
Scientific popularization
- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, Giocare nel mondo antico in Archeo (Anno IX, nº 6 (112)) June 1994, pp. 40-85

Scientific book
- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, Giochi e giocattoli, Casa editrice Quasar, Roma 1995