Ball

Ball. Games with balls were among the most favourite gymnastic exercises of the ancients. They were played almost daily by all, young and old alike; by the highest statesman equally with the lowest of the people. The Greeks prized the game as a means of giving grace and elasticity to the figure; and in their gymnasias, as in the Roman baths, there was a special compartment for ball-playing, where certain rules and gradations of the exercise were to be observed according to the state of health of the player. The balls were of very various kinds; they were generally of leather, and filled with air; others were stuffed with feathers. Ornamented balls, composed of twelve differently coloured segments (such probably as are to be seen in modern toy-shops), are mentioned in Plato's Phædo. There was great variety in the kinds of game, each having a name. In one, the ball was thrown up, and the players strove who would catch it as it fell; another was the same as our football; in a third, a number of persons threw it at one another, either with a view to hit, or for the ball to be caught and returned; in a fourth, the ball was kept rebounding between the earth and the palm of the player's hand as often as possible. Ball-playing seems to have been of equal antiquity in the west of Europe, and to have come down uninterrupted to modern times. In the 16th century it was in great favour in the courts of princes, especially in Italy and France. Towards the end of the 18th century it went out of fashion in the higher circles of continental society, though it is still practised by the people in Italy and Spain, nowhere with more enthusiasm than among the Basques at the base of the Pyrenees. Forms of it, more or less practised, and all of them separately noticed, are Base-ball, Cricket, Croquet, Fives, Football, Golf, Lacrosse, Tennis, Polo, &c.