Games and Plays.
Ball was a game especially liked by the boys and young men of Rome. There were three kinds of balls used—a large hollow ball, a small hollow ball, and a ball stuffed with feathers. At the country villas about Rome there was usually a place for ball-playing. The boys used the streets and squares of Rome for ball-playing, particularly before the butchers' shops in the Forum Romanum. They played ball alone or with a few or with many. In one game the ball was thrown up into the air and all tried to catch it. The trigon, or pila trigonalis, was a favorite way of playing ball, the players being placed in a triangle and they were to fling the ball at one another, the one failing to catch it and return it being the loser. There was a game in which they would choose sides and have the ground marked out as for lawn-tennis.