The Ball by John Fox Read Free Book Online

sphairisterion was episkyros , a team game for which the fourth-century comic playwright Antiphanes passed down what may be the earliest surviving play-by-play sports commentary:
    He caught the ball and laughed as he passed it to one player at the same time as he dodged another. He knocked another player out of the way, and picked one up and set him on his feet, and all the while there were screams and shouts: “Out of bounds!” “Too far!” “Past him” “Over his head!” “Under!” “Over!” “Short!” “Back in the huddle!”
    Episkyros appears to have been a rugby-like game played with a stuffed ball and two teams of 12 or so players. The ball was placed on a center line marked by white gypsum, and two other lines behind each team marked the goals. The rules of the game aren’t well understood but seem to have involved passing the ball among teammates while advancing on the goal of the opposing team. A scene from a marble vase in Athens shows six nude players in the midst of a game, each in various stages of throwing, catching, or running. Other games were played with balls of different sizes. One was a child’s game played with a pig’s bladder inflated with air and then warmed over the ashes of a fire to help round its shape. Another game similar to basketball, called aporrhaxis , involved dribbling an inflated ball along the ground. A single tantalizing scene from Athens shows two men, positioned like hockey players, competing over a small ball with curved sticks, though no such game is mentioned in any surviving account.
    Ball games rose to a higher level of competition in the city-state of Sparta, where all young men in their first year of manhood were generically referred to as “ballplayers.” Inscriptions found there describe an annual episkyros tournament where the winning team was awarded a sickle as trophy. One of the most famous ballplayers of the time was Alexander the Great. After giving up competitive athletics because his subjects always let him win, he turned to ball play for his sport of choice. He employed a professional ballplayer to train with and his endorsement of the game seems to have led to a spike in popularity and the construction of sphairisteria by other members of the nobility.
    Following the lead of their predecessors, the Romans were enthusiastic about ball play, though the innocent games could hardly compete for public attention with the infamous spectacles of Rome’s Circus Maximus, which included gladiatorial combat, lion fights, and often deadly chariot races. Ball games, by comparison, were more private affairs that emphasized exercise over spectacle and sportsmanship over violence. The first-century AD poet Martial described four different kinds of balls and the accompanying games played with them:
    No hand-ball ( pila ), no bladder-ball ( follis ), no feather-stuffed ball ( paganica ) makes you ready for the warm bath, nor the blunted sword-stroke upon the unarmed stump; nor do you stretch forth squared arms besmeared with oil, nor, darting to and fro, snatch the dusty scrimmage-ball ( harpasta ), but you run only by the clear Virgin water.
    Every wealthy Roman had his own sphaeristerium —as the Romans called their ball courts—and they were often attached to the public baths. “Stop play,” wrote Martial the poet, “the bell of the hot bath is ringing.” Pliny the Younger had courts in each of his country houses, including one in Tuscany that was large enough to stage multiple games at once for his weekend guests. Another ball court in Rome was heated from underneath for winter games.
    When wealthy Romans weren’t gathering decadently to watch slaves fight to the death or to crucify dogs in public, they passed time playing harpastum , the most popular ball game of the empire. Played with a softball-sized stuffed ball, the object of the game is hinted at in its name,