CHAPTER III.
TOYS, SPORTS, AND PASTIMES.
Having described, as far as possible, the management of infants and young children, it may not be uninteresting to notice briefly their toys, sports, and pastimes; for, though children have been substantially the same in all ages and countries, the forms of their amusements have been infinitely varied, and where they have resembled each other it is not the less instructive to note that resemblance. The ancients[[455]] have, however, bequeathed us but little information respecting the fragile implements wherewith the happiness of the nursery was in great part erected. Even respecting the recreations which succeeded and amused the leisure of boys our materials for working out a picture are scanty, so that we must content ourselves with little more than an outline. Nevertheless, though the accounts they have transmitted to posterity are meagre, they attached much importance to the subject itself; so that the greatest legislators and philosophers condescended to make regulations respecting it. Thus Plato, with a view of generating a profound reverence for ancient national institutions, forbade even the recreations of boys to be varied with reckless fickleness; for the habit of innovation once introduced into the character would ever after continue to influence it, so that they who in boyhood altered their sports without reason, would without scruple in manhood extend their daring hands to the laws and institutions of their country.[[456]]
Amongst the Hellenes the earliest toy consisted, as in most other countries, of the rattle, said to be the invention of the philosopher Archytas.[[457]] To this succeeded balls of many colours,[[458]] with little chariots, sometimes purchased at Athens in the fair held during the feast of Zeus.[[459]] The common price of a plaything of this kind would appear to have been an obolos. The children themselves, as without any authority might with certainty be inferred, employed their time in erecting walls with sand,[[460]] in constructing little houses,[[461]] in building and carving ships, in cutting carts or chariots out of leather, in fashioning pomegranate rinds into the shape of frogs,[[462]] and in forming with wax a thousand diminutive images, which pursued afterwards during school hours subjected them occasionally to severe chastisement.[[463]]
Another amusement which the children of Hellas shared with their elders was that afforded by puppets,[[464]] which were probably an invention of the remotest antiquity. Numerous women appear to have earned their livelihood by carrying round from village to village these ludicrous and frolicsome images, which were usually about a cubit in height, and may be regarded as the legitimate ancestors of Punch and Judy. By touching a single string, concealed from the spectators, the operator could put her mute performers in action, cause them to move every limb in succession, spread forth the hands, shrug the shoulders, turn round the neck, roll the eyes, and appear to look at the audience.[[465]] After this, by other contrivances within the images, they could be made to go through many humorous evolutions resembling the movements of the dance. These exhibitors, frequently of the male sex, were known by the name of Neurospastæ. This art passed, together with other Grecian inventions, into Italy, where it was already familiar to the public in the days of Horace, who, in speaking of princes governed by favourites, compares them to puppets in the hands of the showman.
“Tu, mihi qui imperitas, aliis servis miser; atque
Duceris, ut nervis alienis mobile lignum.”[[466]]
A very extraordinary puppet, in the form of a silver skeleton, was, according to Petronius Arbiter,[[467]] exhibited at the court of Nero; for, like the Egyptians, this imperial profligate appears to have been excited to sensual indulgences by the remembrance of the grave: “Let us eat and drink,” cried he, “for tomorrow we die.” The skeleton being placed upon the table, in the midst of the tyrant’s orgies, threw its limbs strangely about, and bent its form into various attitudes with wonderful flexibility, which having performed once and again, and then suddenly ceasing to move, the master of the feast exclaimed, “Alas, alas! what a mere nothing is man! Like unto this must we all be when Orcus shall have borne us hence. Therefore let us live while enjoyment is in our power.” But to return to the children of Hellas. Among the earliest sports of the Greek boy was whipping the bembyx or top,[[468]] which would appear to have been usually practised in those open spaces occurring at the junction of several roads:—
“Where three ways meet there boys with tops are found,
That ply the lash and urge them round and round.”[[469]]