=Games and Plays.= Children in Rome played a great deal, just as do children everywhere. They had their dolls and hobby-horses and toy-houses. They played with carts and used them very much as the children of the present. They skipped stones and walked upon stilts and spun tops. They used nuts for playing a number of games, one being called _ludus castellorum_, in which three nuts were to be so arranged that a fourth nut could be placed upon them without displacing them, the winner receiving all the four nuts. They played _par impar_, odd or even. The boys and even sometimes the young men would roll a large iron hoop, which had iron or brass rings fastened around it and kept up quite a clatter while the hoop was rolling. Some of these hoops were five or six feet in diameter and required quite a little skill to roll them, being rolled and guided by means of an iron rod. Ball was a game especially liked by the boys and young men of Rome. There were three kinds of balls used--a large hollow ball, a small hollow ball, and a ball stuffed with feathers. At the country villas about Rome there was usually a place for ball-playing. The boys used the streets and squares of Rome for ball-playing, particularly before the butchers' shops in the Forum Romanum. They played ball alone or with a few or with many. In one game the ball was thrown up into the air and all tried to catch it. The _trigon_, or _pila trigonalis_, was a favorite way of playing ball, the players being placed in a triangle and they were to fling the ball at one another, the one failing to catch it and return it being the loser. There was a game in which they would choose sides and have the ground marked out as for lawn-tennis. =Religion.= The Romans were of a deeply religious nature even down into the times of the empire. Religion entered into the life of the Romans in a practical way and touched upon the civic duties and social relations, as the events of life were held to be of a sacred nature. The Roman life was closely connected with religion, as every activity of life was presided over by a deity, whom it was necessary to worship properly in order that the activity might prove successful.