13 
May 2nd.— The Eev. Canon Eaine read a paper on 
“ Eoman Children and their Burial.” He said :■— £ The object 
of the few remarks that I shall make to day is to give some 
slight explanation and illustration of the curious relics which 
are before you upon the table. They bring back to you the 
amusements of Eoman Children, and the vessels and ornaments 
with which they were laid in their graves. Children in their 
games seem to have been much the same in all times. Of the 
pila or ball, the Eomans were very fond; nay, it was the 
favourite exercise of many of all ages. The most popular, and 
surely the most difficult game of this kind, was what was called 
the pila trigonalis , played by three persons who stood in the 
form of a triangle, and manifested their skill by throwing and 
catching the ball in the left hand. The roundlet of baked clay 
upon the table is, as I suppose, the heart or core of a pila , and 
was covered originally with some soft material. It was 
discovered some years ago under the residence of Dr. Gibson 
in Bootham, in a little place which might be considered the 
baby house of a child. The whistle, of which there is a 
specimen exhibited, has been the delight of the young in all 
ages ; the flagrum or whip, made of less durable material, has 
perished long ago ; so has the top, the volubile buxum , to which 
it was often applied ; so the arundo longa on which the Eoman 
youngster galloped off to his Banbury Cross ; so also the trochus , 
or hoop, which was driven along like ours by a stick with a 
hook at the end. "Unlike ours, however, the Eoman hoop had 
sometimes bells attached to it. There are in our museum 
several pieces of glass which we may call marbles. The little 
roundlets of stone and glass before you are the bases of vessels 
prepared with the greatest care for a game somewhat resembling 
our hopscotch, if not identical with it. Below them is a 
solitary die of jet, probably for the amusement of a child, as it 
is not truly formed. As far back as the days of Horace the 
Eoman lad is rebuked for his ignorance of horsemanship and 
the chase, and his love of the Greek hoop and the forbidden 
dice. The same unhappy tendency at a still later period 
aroused the indignation of the great Eoman satirist. 
The photograph which I exhibit represents the favourite 
