Let us turn from this depressing picture of the one labouring class in Rome to the complementary theme of games and recreations.
GAMES AND RECREATIONS
Nothing is more enlightening to the understanding both of the peculiarities of the individual and of the character of a nation, than to observe the free motion which begins where work leaves off. Professional activity is illustrated more or less in the same fashion all the world over, and it is forced into a more or less perfect uniformity, for it always follows the same aim. Recreation, on the other hand, opens the door to play, in which spontaneous inclination embodies its expression. As the traveller will note with particular attention the games and entertainments in which a nation spends its leisure, so the student of antiquity is prompted to direct his gaze to this side of life. But on no question are the sources of information so reticent, so far as the Romans are concerned, as on the question before us.
If we take as our basis the description which the ancients themselves give us of the activity peculiar to the Romans and their rooted disinclination for the Greek far niente (otium Græcum), the dignified motion and bearing (gravitas) that was so little fitted for gaiety that even Cicero says that only a man drunk or mad can dance; if we bear in mind the foreign nature of the apparatus which, at all events in the time of the emperors, was engaged for the carrying on of games and festivals—the actors, mimes, pantomimes, athletes, gladiators who were employed for amusement, paid and despised,—we shall be inclined to infer that the Romans had altogether little talent for a spirited enjoyment of life and for national rejoicing.
But one piece of general information at least has been unequivocally handed down to us, and this is the fact that they took an early and religious pleasure in dancing, in studying, and in games. At the pompa circensis in the ludi magni, which were celebrated between the 4th and the 19th of September, two detachments of dancers were employed; first those bearing arms in three choruses of men, youths, and boys, all in red tunics with bronze girdles, equipped with swords, lances, and crested helmets, then the comic dancers in sheepskins. Similarly dancing was a part of the ritual of the salii and of the arvales long before it became fashionable with the youths of distinction. Music, too, is acceptable to the gods, and not only in foreign rites, but it is a necessary ingredient in Roman ritual for which the old college of the tubicines and the tibinices provided. Music was indispensable in all festal celebrations, triumphs, funeral processions; and at the feast of Pales (on the 21st of April) the whole town was a blare of wind instruments, cymbals, and kettledrums. Songs and mimic representations were not missing either in the ceremonial of worship, or at home, or on the occasion of popular rejoicing, as we may see from the songs of the salii and of the arvales, from the songs of praise during meals, from the fescennini, saturæ, and atellanæ, as well as from the comic interludes at the Saturnalia, at the Floralia, at the Megalesia, at triumphs, and at funeral processions.
True, these beginnings of an original Roman national poetry never reached their perfect development, because they submitted to the influence of Greek literature, so much admired by the educated classes; but, on the other hand, they resisted this influence so strenuously that Augustus still continued to make fescennini, and the four masked types are still unchanged to-day in the Italian commedia dell’ arte. We may assume the same to have been generally the case with the games of amusement. What was specially Greek in them was absorbed by the higher orders chiefly; what was really national is still to be traced more or less in the Italy of to-day. So the well-known game mora, in which two players hold out a number of fingers at the same moment and let their adversary guess how many they were, is found certainly with the Greeks, but is of extreme antiquity in Italy, where it is described by the expression micare digitis, and was used on grave occasions, and particularly on the occasion of business transactions, as a kind of lottery (sors). On the whole, the information on Roman games is uncommonly scanty, and it is vain to attempt to imagine a definite picture of the entertainments at the Matronalia, the Vinalia, and the Saturnalia.
Ovid once describes the festival of Anna Perenna that was celebrated on a heath on the Via Flaminia, but there is nothing characteristic in the whole description; people eat, drink, dance, and sing, but what they sing are not national songs. “Cantant,” says Ovid, “cantant quidquid didicere theatris.” What we hear of games in Rome is all Greek or is reckoned as such at least; even the old game of jumping upon full leather bottles that were oiled, and trying, it would appear, to stand on one’s head upon them, is mentioned by Virgil as Attic, and in fact identical with the Greek ἀσκωλιάξειν. Under these circumstances we must not attempt to prove the existence of any form of national rejoicing peculiar to the Romans, and must confine ourselves to gathering together those games which, although customary in Greece also, are frequently mentioned in Rome. On the one hand, we have children’s and young men’s games; on the other, games of hazard and board games.
The game of ball, which is known to all antiquity, is certainly a game for young men, but owing to the healthy movement which it affords, and which Galen quite particularly recommends in a singular pamphlet on the little ball, it was also a recreation for elder persons as useful as it was agreeable. In Rome and Italy generally ball was played, both on the Campus Martius, where the younger Cato himself might have been seen taking part in the game, and in the sphæristeria especially laid out for the purpose in the baths and villas. Among the players of ball were Mucius Scævola, Cæsar, the emperor Augustus, Mæcenas, the old Spurinna the friend of Pliny, the emperor Alexander Severus; and there were people who spent their whole time in this amusement.
During the empire five kinds of balls were employed, one small, one middle-sized, one large, one very large, one full of air. Perhaps these five kinds correspond to the Latin expressions pila, trigon or pila trigonalis, pila paganica, harpastum, perhaps identical with pila arenaria, and follis. The ordinary ball was stuffed with hair and sewn with bright or at all events coloured patches; the paganica, the name of which indicates a game between people en masse, in which the whole village (pagus) in the country took part, was a large ball stuffed with feathers; the follis, which was first discovered in the time of Pompey, was the largest and was full of air (κενή); of the harpastum we know nothing further than that it was a small hard ball.
The different kinds of games may be determined first by the nature of the throw and secondly by the number of people engaged in the games. First the ball may be thrown up and caught by the thrower himself or by another—this is the Greek οὐρανία; secondly the ball may pass between two or more players (datatim ludere), the object being skill in throwing (διδόναι), dare, ittere, jactare, in catching (λαμβάνειν, δέχεσθαι, facere, excipere), and in throwing back (remittere, repercutere). Finally the ball may be bounced violently on the ground or against the wall, so that it rebounds and may be repeatedly slapped with the hand. In this game, which is the Greek ἀποῤῥαξις and the Latin expulsim ludere, the number of bounces are counted, and if several play, the winner is he who can keep it up longest without letting the ball fall. The true significance of the word pilicrepus is certainly to be found from this game, as elsewhere the ball makes no especial kind of noise. According to this, apart from the height of the throw, we may indicate all the methods of playing ball by the formulæ of datatim, reptim, expulsim ludere.