The Romans, a more serious people than the Greeks, often sought recreation in ball-playing. Cato the Elder, and also Scævola, are mentioned as expert ball players. The Hellenes were thus well aware that uninterrupted employment was detrimental to both physical and mental life. This idea was most beautifully expressed by Pythagoras in his hygiene of body and soul. Therefore, in connection with the gymnastic system of the Hellenes, were developed many gymnastic games which did not require any special apparatus and which were not intended for tests of superior strength, but merely to furnish pleasant and suitable physical exercise. A game called ὀστράκου περιστροφή was often played. The boys arranged themselves in two divisions on either side of a line. One of them then held up a piece of broken crockery, or an oyster shell, one side of which was blackened with tar. One division chose the black side, the other the white. A boy then threw the fragment, with the words, νύξ, ἡμέρα. The advantage belonged to that side whose color appeared uppermost after the throw; this division then pursued the other; those who were captured were called donkeys and were debarred from further participation in the game. The ἐποστρακισμός (_Pollux_ ix, 119), a more informal game, was played by boys on the beach, or on the shore of a pond. The sport consisted in “skipping” smooth, flat pebbles or shells over the surface of the water. The boy who “skipped” his pebble to the greatest distance, or, perhaps, made it cut the water the greatest number of times, was victor. This pastime, known as “Ducks and Drakes,” is still in favor with boys. There were two games for testing bodily strength, the διελκυστίνδα and the σκαπέρδα. In the διελκυστίνδα a party of children separated into two divisions, each of which faced the other in a row, so as to give every member an opponent. Probably a line of some kind lay between the two divisions, and the game consisted in each boy’s striving to pull his opponent across it by means of a rope. The victory was decided when all members of one side had been forced to the other. The σκαπέρδα was a game in which a rope was passed through a hole made in a tree-trunk or rough pillar, at some distance from the ground. Two contestants then took their places on opposite sides of the pillar, with their backs to each other and each holding an end of the rope. If one of them could succeed in lifting the other from the ground he was declared victor, but so difficult was the feat that the phrase σκαπέρδαν ἕλκειν came in time to be a proverbial expression applicable to very difficult tasks. This sport was one of the amusements at the Attic Dionysia.