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Skill games

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

Skill games
The spinning tops.
When the boys grew up, clay horses and little cars that they so much liked, toys of their younger years, lost all their attractives to them. Now they wanted more exciting playthings, the ones which requested their skill, very ancient games, however, passtimes invented in the night of times. One of them was the spinning top a toy which already existed at the time of the Trojan war. It was played with a long lash and lively contests were held among teenagers to see which one of them would succeed in keeping his top spinning for a longer time. To set it in motion, the long lash was wrapped around it, then, with all the might he had, the boy threw it away and at the same time snatched the string back to impress a rapid rotatory movement to the top. After this, every time the top began slowing down, the player gave it strong lashes and kept it spinning again.
From this description it is evident that little children, who didn’t have the strength to throw away the toy and set it spinning, could never play at this game which, as a matter of fact, was widely used only by teen agers. Lots of spinning tops have been found in the excavations and many come from the Cabirion of Thebes. Some of them were made of ceramic, others of wood and many were moulded in metal. The game is represented in a a long series of vases and cups in which we can see beautiful teen agers passing their time at this game.

The hoops
Another very popular young boys passtime was to bowl a hoop, and those hoops had to be made to measure. Usually a good hoop had to be as high as its owner chest. Many of these playthings were moulded in metal, bue some wooden ones could exist. Hoever the best ones and the most sought after were the bronze ones, The young ephebes pushed them on the rough stones of the towns street and the hoops, bouncing on the uneven cobblestones, were heard from far away. This sound was pleasurable to the ears of the town’s omosexuals who went to their doors to see the teenagers. Very often the same expensive bronze hoops were the gifts given to the youths by the town omos hoping to obtain their favours, but they were not always successful. Thus on a precious ceramic we see a furious flying Eros flingling himself on two young teenagers, and menacing them with a sandal which he held closely in his fist. The god of love is prepared to beat them violently because they didn’t yield to his orders and to their lovers requests. The two run away: one of them flee and, abandoning his top which is still spinning, throw away his lash. His companion, less inclined to abandon his precious toy, speed away with his hoop and the stick to push it on held fast in his arms. Not even the menaces and the fury of the god could persuade him to facilitate his escape throwing them away.



The reel.
The reel is another very popular toy of the teenagers. We see it painted in a scene of a well noted ceramist known by the name of “Pentesilea painter”. These reels are no other that our own Yo-Yos which in the 1940 years was a great success. Not many of the ancient ones had been preserved. As a matter of fact only six have been found, but all of them are preciously decorated and their artistic quality is outstanding. There is no doubt however that those objects were used as toys: in two red figures vases of the V cent B.C. (a cup at Berlin and an amphora at Erlagen), we see two boys playing with them. Due to the high artistic qualities of the six reels that have been found, it is highly probable that pieces of such a high value were love gifts, but we cannot exclude that they were not part of some funerary store or votive offerings.

The eternal plays:
Of course among the rest of the usual passtimes there were some which we could define as eternal; games which were used thousand of years ago and are always in use. One is the swing which already existed in Minoic and Mycenean times and was represented in small ceramic statuettes. Other swings were depicted in the Greek ceramic, and also on some steles or on the great white amphoras which, in ancient Greek cemeteries, were used to mark the tombs’ emplacements. Some swings were simple ropes attached to a tree branch, Some were more comfortable, thus on one of them a cushion had been set on the seat to make the users feel more at ease; on some others a small chair or a stool had been fixed
Along with the swing another very ancient game was the see-saw, simple passtime organized setting a long wooden board in equilibrium on a big stone or on a fallen tree and these are not the only toys which we can define as eternal. For instance we can cite the kite. In ancient Greece children played with it, and on a ceramic vase we see a girl holding the string to which a kite had been tied. It is a very simple one with a triangular shape and it was certainly not made of paper as ours are, because in ancient times there was no paper. Thus these toys must have been made using a light tissue or a a thin membrane. However this didn’t change the substance of the game. The triangular kite would behave just as ours modern own and would flew wavering slowly, well tied to the string that its little owner was holding in his hand.
Other passtimes were the ones that children created on the beach. For instance also in ancient times flat pebbles were launched on the water to make them perform a series of jumps. The more the best. Of course also then, when ancient Troy’s was young (Iliad, 15, 361),.boys built fantastic structures. large and complex buildings were the youmg one could organize battles and wars, and the game lasted until a wave, stronger thant the others, came and erased everything from the beach.



The “Moskinda”and other games.
There were also other games which children organized to pass their time in any open area. One of this was the “moskinda, a word derivated from “moskios” which in Greek mean “veal”. Prof. Paolino Mingazzini found it represented in a stucco frieze of the Pitagoric Basilic of Porta Maggiore in Rome. In it we see all the children set in a line with the first one crouched and waiting for the next one to jump over him. Thus the game went on with all the children jumping over their fellows and so son and so on.
However in ancient times there were many other passtimes. For instance at Herculaneus we see a lot of them depicted on the walls of one of its Domus. Here there is a series of nice small pictures showing us the kind of games which, before the Vesuvius’ eruption, children played in the Campanian towns. The young ones, represented as winged erotes, occupy tehmselves in a series of very ancient and still very well known games. Some of them play at hide and seek. They are all concealed around the house and from a fissure left by a slightly ajar door we can see one of them, standing there and very afraid to be discovered. In another small picture the children play at tug-of-war and in another one two little winged Eros ride two small chariots one of which is pulled by a meek and resigned long horned goat. The chariots. The most coveted dreams of Roman children was to own a miniature chariot, very similar to the ones which aroused the antagonism of their fathers routing for the circus’ four different factions: the Reds, the Whites, the Blue and the Greens. But a chariot was the kind of gift that only a very rich and very generous father could afford.


Blind-man buff and other games.
Another passtime of ancient times children was blind-man buff, an economical game because all you needed to play it was an handkerchief or a rag. Then the children who had lost the count out was bandaged and began to run after his companions trying to catch one of them and thus pass to him his penalty.
Besides all those games children organized other ones which mimicked grown up occupations. Thus many young ones feigned to be merchants or shopowners selling to older brothers and benign mothers buns, vegetables and fruits, in short all the food that they had succeeded to take away from their fathers larders.
Other children who, from their youngest years, felt the calling to command, liked to play the judges more than any other games. When he was still a child it seem that Septimius Severus refused any other passtime. However the tribunal game offered to his littke companions many roles that they could occupy and also exchange with their companions. Obviously the most important part was the judge’s one, the kind of role which Septimius Severus never gave up. Thus he made his companions to play the lictors and precede him with the fasces: we can imagine while he advance with a grim countenance menacing all his companions who dared to laugh at him. Once he had climbed on the dais and was seated on the chair, he began the trial, with the culprit in chains, the lawyers fighting among them and the spectators taking a a lively part to the scene and waiting to see what will be the vedict.
There is no doubt on what Septimius Severus wanted to do once grown up.

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