The Game That Would be King

PROLOGUE
3500BC-678AD

In ancient Athens there is a festival game, askloiasmos.1 Contestants hop on oiled goatskins filled with wine, and the last to slip off is the winner. Another ball game is far more popular. Episkyros is played with two equal sides of twelve to fourteen players. A line is described with stone chippings along the centre of a pitch marked out with parallel lines.2 The teams stand along their boundary line, and a ball is placed at the centre. On signal, they rush for the ball. The player who reaches it first tosses the ball over his opponents to get it towards their line. The opposition aim to intercept the ball and do likewise. To and fro goes the game until a player oversteps his boundary line and his team is defeated. It is unclear when episkyros developed; undisputed descriptions date to the first century AD, though it is likely that Plato refers to the game c369BC.3 A third game, phaininda, is also played. Athenaeus famously quotes Antiphanes's description.4,5

The player takes the ball elate,

And gives it safely to his mate,

Avoid the blows of th'other side,

And shouts to see them hitting wide;

List to the cries, "Hit here," "hit there,"

"Too far," "Too high," "that is not fair,"

See every man with ardour burns,

To make good strokes and quick returns.6

It must have been a rough game, for Antiphanes adds, "Wretch that I am, my neck's so stiff." Athenaeus says that the philosopher Ctesibius7 "was no bad player. And there were many friends of Antigonus the king who used to take off their coats and play ball with him."8,9 The game involves feigning and intercepting. Different translations drastically alter the essence of the game. The stilted passage quoted is elsewhere translated as: "When he got the ball he delighted to give it to one player while dodging the other; he knocked it away from one and urged on another with noisy cries . 'Outside, a long pass, beyond him, over his head, a short pass.'"10 The cries in a third translation include: "out of bounds", "right beside him", "on the ground", "too short", and worryingly, "pass it back in the scrimmage".11 The term scrimmage (as scrummage) in the sporting sense is not heard of until 1848; a sobering example of the pitfalls of sports history and the need for restrained conclusions. The term appears in Recollections of Rugby. Only eighteen words in, C. H. Newmarch writes of his childhood at Rugby School and "the pleasures of a scrummage at football."12 Newmarch is referring to the 1830s, when he was a pupil at Rugby.

A c510BC ball game, likely to be phaininda, is depicted on a marble relief at the base of a Greek funerary kouros statue.13 Two sides of three players face each other. The players are positioned in forward, middle, and back rows. One of the rear players is about to throw the ball. His teammates dart forward, one readying to receive it. The opposition's defender is ordering the front player to move back, while their middle player also prepares to catch the ball. It is likely that each player represents several in a line. While little else is known of phaininda, the Roman game of harpastum is believed to have been essentially the same. It is important to differentiate ball sports involving teams, from other forms of ball games. Ball play in ancient Greece was a ubiquitous pursuit. According to Athenaeus, Timocrates the Lacedaemon wrote a treatise on ball playing.14,15,16 Aristotle recommended balls as suitable presents for children,17,18,19 and Dionysius I of Syracuse enjoyed ball play, Sophocles too.20,21,22,23 Simpler games were also played in gymnasia, such as bouncing a ball against a wall or the floor and striking it with the flat of the hand on the rebound. Plato mentions several men present, raising the prospect of an early version of fives.24,25

The first reference to a ball game in literature is played by women. In Homer's Odyssey, c800BC, Princess Nausikaä plays with her maids. "They then threw off their veils and turned to playing ball, and white-armed Nausikaä was their leader as they sang . when the princess next tossed the ball . she missed the handmaid, and sent it into a deep eddy."26 Their cries of dismay wake the stranded, naked Odysseus, who mingles among them. In Apollonius's c300BC Argonautica, Zeus is given a ball in infancy: "I will give you Zeus's all-beauteous plaything . a well-rounded ball . All of gold are its zones, and round each double seams run in a circle; but the stiches are hidden, and a dark blue spiral overlays them all."27 The remarkable description implies four or more segments. Better still, a few lines later: "This I will give you; and you, strike with your shaft and charm the daughter of Aeëtes with love for Jason." He is to woo her with his prowess in a stick and ball game. While there are earlier depictions of stick and ball games, it is the first written reference in history.

Greek author and Homerian expert Agallis28 believes her fellow-albeit mythic-Corcyraean Nausikaä invented ball play.29 Dicaearchus30 attributes it to the Greek city state of Sicyon,31 while Hippasus of Metapontum32 credits Sparta with its invention.33 Herodotus argues otherwise. The Histories tells of the reign of the mythic King Atys of Lydia, who ruled from c1220 to c1190BC.34,35 During a famine, the citizens survive by eating one day and fasting the next. Fasting days are occupied by playing ball, dice, knucklebones, and other games, so "that they might not feel the want of food." Irrespective of source, organised ball play is likely to have originated as dances, incorporating tumbling and ball skills. Athenaeus mentions two men known for their skills "at this game", Demoteles36 and Chaerephanes.37,38

The Macedonians who conquer Athens in 338BC share a similar regard for ball play; Alexander the Great, himself, plays.39 The first recorded competitive player is Aristonicus. Around 330BC, "The Athenians made Aristonicus the Carystian, Alexander's ball-player, a citizen of the city on account of his skill, and they erected a statue to him."40 While the skill for which he received the highest honour the city can bestow is probably diplomatic, the statue is likely to have depicted his ball skills. Sparta appears passionate about ball sports. Organised games are played by graduating cadets. The rules are unknown, though evidence suggests it is a variation of episkyros.41,42 Pollux43 describes it as sphairomachia-battle with a ball-and Plato recommends it played in full armour to train citizens to defend their state.44,45 If a Spartan game for contemporary teenagers is anything to go by, the cadet game is brutal. Played without a ball, two companies of naked youths try to command an artificial island surrounded by ditches.46 Players hit, kick, punch, and push their opponents into the water, in a manner not dissimilar to British mob (folk) football.47,48 As late as 160AD, victories of young Spartans at an annual contest of an unspecified ball game are recorded; sides of fifteen or more, representing their local district, play a tournament game.49 The origins of episkyros, phaininda, and the Spartan version, cannot be dated with certainty, but they are well established by the mid-fourth century BC.

The Romans conquer Athens in 146BC. They have their own competitive ball game, harpastum; according to Athenaeus, the Roman name for phaininda. The Romans play other games: sky-ball, where a player throws a ball up for others to catch; trigon, where players stand at the corners of a triangle and throw the ball to each other; and a piggyback game, where the mounted must catch the ball.50 The latter is similar, if not identical, to an ancient Egyptian game. Harpastum is a team sport that involves feinting (pretending to throw the ball to one player, then throwing it to another) and intercepting. A follis, the smallest and hardest of the four balls available, is used.51,52

Harpastum is Athenaeus's favourite game. He writes, "There was a great deal of exertion and labour in a game of ball, and it causes great straining of the neck and shoulder." Isidorus of Miletus53 mentions "the circle of players standing by and waiting", while an amusing anecdote from Sidonius provides further detail.54,55 It concerns an elderly man, a good player in his youth: "Now he was repeatedly pushed by the inside runner from his place in the standing circle, then again, being brought inside the ring, he failed alike to cut across, or to dodge the path of the ball on its course, as it flew close to his face or was flung over his head; and he would often bend low in a flying tackle and then scarcely manage to recover from his staggering swerve. So, he was the first to retire from the stress and strain of the game, puffing and blowing in a state of internal...