Horace[[476]] likewise alludes to the game:—
“Indoctusque pilæ discive trochive quiescit.”
This poet clearly informs us that the Romans received the game from the Greeks:[[477]]—
“Ludere doctior,
Seu Græco jubeas trocho,
Seu malis vetita legibus alea.”
Another less innocent amusement was[[478]] spinning goldchafers, which appears to have afforded the Greek urchins the same delight as tormenting cockchafers does their successors of the north. This species of beetle making its appearance when the apple-trees were in bloom, was therefore called Melolanthe, or apple-blossom. Having caught it, and tied a linen thread about its feet, it was let loose, and the fun was to see it move in spiral lines through the air as it was twisted by the thread.[[479]]
It was the practice among the children of Greece, when the sun happened to be obscured by a cloud, to exclaim, “Ἔξεχ᾽ ὦ φίλ᾽ ἥλιε!”—“Come forth, beloved sun!” Strattis makes allusion to this custom in a fragment of his Phœnissæ:—
“Then the god listened to the shouting boys,
When they exclaimed, ‘Come forth, beloved sun!’”[[480]]