ἄλλεσθαι ὑπὲρ τὸ σκάμμα. _J.H.S._ _l.c._ p. 71. Footnote 560: In Oribasius, vi. 14. 34, the passages from Antyllus and Galen are quoted. The chapter of Oribasius on exercises contains a variety of interesting quotations from earlier medical writers. Footnote 561: On this subject _vide_ Ernst Brücke, _The Human Figure_, translated by William Anderson, pp. 115 ff. CHAPTER XV THROWING THE DISKOS It will be remembered that while frequent reference is made in the Homeric poems to throwing the diskos,[562] the weight thrown at the games of Patroclus was a lump of unwrought iron described as “solos.” The word diskos seems already to have acquired its special athletic meaning, but there is in Homer nothing distinctively athletic about “solos,” which probably meant originally a boulder, then a mass of iron. Later writers occasionally use “solos” as equivalent to diskos, and scholiasts and lexicographers are much exercised in distinguishing the two terms.[563] Their arbitrary and often contradictory distinctions still find a place in our dictionaries and commentaries. The diskos, they tell us, is flat, the solos round and ball-shaped; the diskos of stone, the solos of metal; the diskos has a hole in it and is thrown by means of a cord; the solos is solid. The first distinction is fairly accurate: the diskos is more or less flat, the solos is a mass which may be roundish. As to material, we know that the diskos was made in stone and in metal; the solos might also be stone or metal. As to the hole and cord, authorities differ: some assign them to the diskos, some to the solos. That they belonged to the solos is disproved by every passage in which the word is used; that they belonged to the diskos is still more conclusively disproved by the monuments. The origin of this blunder, which is ascribed to Eratosthenes, may perhaps be found in some popular game in which a round object is bowled along by means of a cord wound round it. A game of this sort called “ruzzola” is still played in parts of Italy on the roads, much to the danger of pedestrians.[564] It is played with round stones about a foot in diameter, or sometimes with cheeses, which are believed to be improved by the treatment. A more probable explanation of the mistake is that suggested to me by Mr. J. L. Myres, and already accepted in Chapter II., that the scholia to _Iliad_ xxiii. have become dislocated, and that the hole and string belong not to the diskos or the solos, but to the word καλαῦροψ mentioned in the same passage. This word, usually interpreted as a shepherd’s staff, is explained by Mr. Myres as a kind of bolas, an implement formed by a string to which one or more perforated stones are attached, which is used in the present day in South America for catching cattle, and is still a plaything with boys in the country districts of Greece. Whatever