The Phryginda was a game in which, holding a number of smooth and delicate fragments of pottery between the fingers of the left hand, they struck them in succession with the right so as apparently to produce a kind of music.[498] Footnote 498: Turneb. Advers. xxvii. 33. Poll. ix. 114. Comment. t. vi. p. 1178. There was another game called Kyndalismos, played with short batons, and requiring considerable strength and quickness of eye. A stick having been fixed up-right in a loose moist soil, the business was to dislodge it by throwing at it other batons from a distance; whence the proverb, “Nail is driven out by nail, and baton by baton.”[499] A person who played at this game was called by some of the Doric poets Kyndalopactes.[500] A similar game is played in England, in which the prize is placed upon the top of the upright stick. The player wins when the prize falls without the hole whence the upright has been dislodged. Footnote 499: Vid. Vatic. Append. Proverb. Cent. ii. prov. 12. et Ib. not. And. Schotto. Kühn ad Poll. t. vi. p. 1190. Footnote 500: Meursius, Græc. Lud. p. 26. and after him Pfeiffer, Ant. Græc. iv. p. 120. read κινδαλοπαίκτης, which Hemsterhuis observes is contrary to the authority of the MSS. The game of Ascoliasmos[501] branched off into several varieties, and afforded the Athenian rustics no small degree of sport. The first and most simple form consisted in hopping on one foot, sometimes in pairs, to see which in this way could go furthest. On other occasions the hopper undertook to overtake certain of his companions who were allowed the use of both legs. If he could touch one of them he came off conqueror. This variety of the game appears to have been the Empusæ ludus of the Romans. “Scotch hoppers,” or “Fox to thy hole,” in which boys, hopping on one leg, beat one another with gloves or pieces of leather tied at the end of strings, or knotted handkerchiefs, as in the _diable boîteux_ of the French. At other times victory depended on the number of hops, all hopping together and counting their springs,—the highest of course winning. But the most amusing variety of the game was that practised during the Dionysiac festival of the Askolia. Skins filled with wine or inflated with air, and extremely well oiled, were placed upon the ground, and on these the shoeless rustics leaped with one leg and endeavoured to maintain a footing, which they seldom could on account of their slipperiness. However, he who succeeded carried off the skin of wine as his prize. Footnote 501: Phurnutus, De Nat. Deorum, c. 30. p. 217. seq. Gale.—Poll. ix. 121. Sch. Aristoph. Plut. 1130. Kust.—Meurs. Græc. Fer. p. 52; Græc. Ludibunda, p. 6.