Galen's Exercise With a Small Ball in the Context of Ancient Sports Medicine

Abstract

This paper is devoted to a treatise “On the exercise with the small ball” written by Galen of Pergamon. On the basis of analysis of its rhetorical features the author argues that it belongs to the genre of encomium or thesis. The author also investigates different aspects of playing with a small ball in the context of ancient sports medicine. Despite the fact that Galen does not mention the name of this game in his treatise, a comparison of the evidence of various ancient authors suggests that the game was called harpaston (lat. harpastum) or phaininda. Analysis of the text and of the parallel passages in other writings of Galen has shown that the game described here was a team game which had strict rules of playing. In contrast to professional sports, it belonged to the category of sports exercises, which played an important role in maintaining and strengthening human health.”