with flexible limbs, like the one in Fig. [66], or with clothes to take on and off, and representing all manner of gods, heroes, or mortals; dolls’ beds were also known. Though boys may have sometimes played with these figures, or even made them for themselves out of clay or wax, yet we generally find them in the hands of girls, who seem to have taken pleasure in them even after the first years of childhood; indeed, it was not uncommon, since Greek girls married very early, for them to play with their dolls up to the time of their marriage, and just before their wedding to take these discarded favourites, with their whole wardrobe, to some temple of the maiden Artemis, and there dedicate them as a pious offering.
Fig. 68.
The boys delighted in other more masculine pleasures. Like our own boys, they played with box-wood tops and whips, singing a merry song the while, or else they bowled their iron hoops, to which bells or rings were attached. The hoop was a favourite toy until the age of youth, and we often find it on vase paintings in the hands of quite big boys. (Compare Fig. [67].) We may certainly assume that
Fig. 69.
they also had little imitations of warlike implements such as swords and shields; a little quiver, which can hardly have served any other purpose (compare Fig. [68]) has been found. Clever boys made their own toys, and cut little carts and ships out of wood or leather, and carved frogs and other animals out of pomegranate rinds. Our hobby-horse, too, was known to the ancients, as is proved by a pretty anecdote told of Agesilaus. He was once surprised by a visitor playing with his children, and riding merrily about on a hobby-horse. It is said that he begged his friend not to tell of the position in which he had found the terrible general, until he should himself have children of his own. Kite-flying also was known to them, as is proved by the vase painting represented in Fig. [69], which, though rough in drawing, distinctly shows the action.