as Gray expresses it, in his reminiscences of the Eton play-ground, was crooked at the point, and called a plectron: its exact representation may any day, in the proper season, be seen in the streets of London impelling forward the iron hoop of our own children. The passages of ancient authors, in which mention of the trochos occurs, appear to have been imperfectly understood before the discovery of a basso-rilievo, in marble, on the road from Rome to Tivoli, afterwards removed to the vineyard of the Cardinal Alexander Albani. On certain engraved gems also, in the cabinet of Stosch, are several representations of boys playing at hoop, where the trochos in some cases reaches to the waist, in others to the breast, and where the child is very small up to the chin. It has been conjectured by Winkelmann,[472] that a circle represented in one of the paintings of Herculaneum was no other than an ancient trochos. Rolling the hoop formed a part of the exercises of the palæstra, which were performed even by very young children. Thus we find the nurse describing the sons of Medeia returning from playing at hoop the very day that they were slain by their mother.[473] This amusement has been described briefly by the Roman poets. Thus Martial:[474]— “Garrulus in laxo cur annulus orbe vagatur Cedat, et argutis obvia turba trochis.” Footnote 468: Schol. Aristoph. Vesp. 1517. Diog. Laert. i. 4. 8. Cf. Hyde Nerdilud. p. 259. Footnote 469: Callim. Ep. i. 9. seq. p. 180. Footnote 470: I. 5. 3. Footnote 471: Cf. Caylus, Rec. D’Antiq. t. vi. 318. seq. Footnote 472: Descr. des Pierres Grav. du Cab. de Stosch. 452. seq. Footnote 473: Eurip. Mod. 45. et Sch. Footnote 474: L. xiv. Ep. 169. Propertius[475] notices the crooked form of the plectron, or clavis:— “Increpat et versi clavis adunca trochi.” Horace[476] likewise alludes to the game:— “Indoctusque pilæ discive trochive quiescit.” This poet clearly informs us that the Romans received the game from the Greeks:[477]— “Ludere doctior, Seu Græco jubeas trocho, Seu malis vetita legibus alea.” Another less innocent amusement was[478] spinning goldchafers, which appears to have afforded the Greek urchins the same delight as tormenting cockchafers does their successors of the north. This species of beetle making its appearance when the apple-trees were in bloom, was therefore called _Melolanthe_, or apple-blossom. Having caught it, and tied a linen thread about its feet, it was let loose, and the fun was to see it move in spiral lines through the air as it was twisted by the thread.[479] Footnote 475: iii. 12. Footnote 476: