Mária T. Biró: The Bone Objects of the Roman Collection. (Catalogi Musei Nationalis Hungarici. Seria Archeologica 2; Budapest, 1994)

IX. ENTERTAINMENT, PLAY - 3. Sports [strigilis)

has found in the royal burial place of Sakkara such ivory game pieces together with the ivory inlayed game board belonging to it. A part of the pieces was semi-globular, the other cylindric with a lotus-flower at the top.

118 Fig. 40. Bone game piece called miles or hostis Similar tall, plastically carved game pieces were also known by Romans (Fig. 40.). In the 1930s P. Steiner has published such pieces from Trier.

119 There are among them several cylindric and truncated cone shaped pieces, he top of the pieces is a small, removable lid. We can compare them to miniature jars. Their superficies is decorated with diverse patterns, canellatures and ribs. There are five such bone pieces in the Collection from Visegrád, Dunapentele and from other, today unknown, sites. (Nos. 674-678.) In the course of excavations at Tác there were also such objects unearthed, which — on the analogy of the finds from Trier — can be determined as game pieces. (Nos. 669-673.) The convex bone discs from Szombathely are decorated exactly as the piece lids published by Steiner. 3. Sports (strigilis) (No. 636.) In a wider sense different jars for oinments also belonged to sports as physical culture. However, these were already mentioned in connection with cosmetics. Here mention should be made of a device indispensable at physical training. It was called strigilis and used by the athlete for rubbing off oil from his body after training or competition; (Fig. 41. and furthermore the famous statue of Lysippos, the Apoxyomenos) a gesture which was preserved for us by the statue of the athlete. Both ends of the 20 cm long and 2-2 1/2 cm wide strigilis to be found in the Collection are rounded and its broader end is rather worn. A similar bone plate is known from Trier with the inscription: L. RESTITUTI SPATA.

120 Fig. \l. Athlete using strigil