Archive image from page 448 of Discovery Discovery discovery0304londuoft Year: DISCOVERY 99 it up from the ground, since in the former case the ba]l can be thrown back as soon as received. The main function of the ' full-back,' then, is to be able to catch and to throw. In the team that is retiring the same division of duties can be detected. The ' forward ' is retiring cautiousl}', ready to advance again. The ' three- quarter ' is alert, ready to move in any direction, and the ' full-back ' is waiting to catch the ball and throw it back. In addition, the ' full-back ' seems to be the capta
Archive image from page 448 of Discovery Discovery discovery0304londuoft Year: DISCOVERY 99 it up from the ground, since in the former case the ba]l can be thrown back as soon as received. The main function of the ' full-back,' then, is to be able to catch and to throw. In the team that is retiring the same division of duties can be detected. The ' forward ' is retiring cautiousl}', ready to advance again. The ' three- quarter ' is alert, ready to move in any direction, and the ' full-back ' is waiting to catch the ball and throw it back. In addition, the ' full-back ' seems to be the captain : his left arm is extended as though he were signalling to the ' forward ' to fall back. It is, I think, no mere coincidence that his gesture corre- sponds to the modern Greek equivalent of our own gesture of beckoning. The hand is turned down and makes a sweeping downward The general correspondence of the sculptured scene much evidence as to the contests of teams of ball- players,2 but unfortunately there is little to enable us to tell the nature of these Spartan games. It is, of course, possible that Athens derived many of her non-Olympian games from Sparta itself. The games of the everyday life of the palaestra, called by the Greeks iratyn'ai, were said by the Lydians to have been learnt by the Greeks from Lydia. Lydia, we know, was in the closest possible touch with Sparta in the seventh and early sixth centuries , and it seems probable that Sparta was the home of the ordinary athletic game. The game of Episkyros certainly falls into the category of a Traiyvia. It was also called Ephebike or Epikoinos, Pollux tells us— the first because it was a game rather for young men than for children, the second because a moderately large number of players took part in it. VllltMAN liyUIVALENT UF RUGBY. with the game described by Pollux thus seems evident. No element of the game as described by Pollux con- tradicts what we have in the relief. On the other hand, we
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