Antiquities

In Ancient Rome the Acta Arvalia recorded protocols of the priestly brotherhood (sodalitas) of the Arvales fratres, who emerged from obscurity at the end of the Republican period as an elite group, to judge from the status of their known members in the Augustan period. Though their rituals were conducted outside the pomerium that demarcated the official confines of the city in earliest times, their acta were inscribed in marble tablets fastened to the walls of the Temple of Dea Dia, goddess of the grove, near the Roman Forum. The protocols, the earliest of which are testimony of the early Latin language, were mentioned by M. Terentius Varro, De lingua Latina v.85.
“The transcription of the records of this priesthood onto stone provided possibly the biggest coherent complex of inscriptions of the Roman ancient world,” Jörg Rüpke has observed. The documentation was restricted to the presence in routine rituals and special occasions (vota) of participating members, the name of the place where sacrifices occurred, and specific dates. The Acta Arvalia are an important source for ancient Roman prosopography and a useful one for the study of Roman religion and cultus. Actual liturgies are lacking: the first instance of a hymn text, the famous Carmen Arvale in incomprehensibly archaic Latin was not entrusted to publication in a stone inscription until the beginning of the third century CE, when few could have deciphered it.
Fragments of the inscriptions were first recovered by Prof Wilhelm Henzen, 1866-69. Further fragments subsequently came to light.

Hoop rolling, also called hoop trundling, is both a sport and a child’s game in which a large hoop is rolled along the ground, generally by means of an implement wielded by the player. The aim of the game is to keep the hoop upright for long periods of time or to do various tricks.
Hoop rolling has been documented since antiquity in Africa, Asia and Europe. Played as a target game it is an ancient tradition among widely dispersed aboriginal societies. In Asia, the earliest records date from Ancient China, and in Europe from Ancient Greece.
In the West, the most common materials for the equipment have been wood and metal. Wooden hoops, driven with a stick about one foot long, are struck with the center or the 2/3 point of the stick in order to ensure good progress. Metal hoops, instead of being struck, are often guided by a metal hook.
Ancient Greece
The Greeks referred to the hoop as the trochus. Hoop rolling was practiced in the gymnasium, and the hoop was also used for tumbling and dance with different techniques. Although a popular form of recreation, hoop rolling was not featured in competition at the major sports festivals. Hoops, also called krikoi, were probably made of bronze, iron, or copper, and were driven with a stick called the elater. The hoop was sized according to the player, as it had to come up to the level of the chest. Greek vases generally show the elater as a short straight stick. The sport was regarded as healthful, and was recommended by Hippocrates for strengthening weak constitutions. Even very young children would play with hoops, a fact immortalized by Euripides in his play Medea, in which the two young sons meet their death at their mother’s hands as they return from driving hoops.
The hoop thus held symbolic meanings in Greek myth and culture. A bronze hoop was one of the toys of the infant Dionysus, and hoop driving is an attribute of Ganymede, often depicted on Greek vase paintings from the fifth c. BCE. Images of the hoop are sometimes presented in the context of ancient Greek pederastic tradition.
Ancient Rome
The Romans learned hoop driving from the Greeks and generally held the sport in high regard. The Latin term for hoop is also trochus, at times referred to as the “Greek hoop.” The stick was known as a clavis or radius, had the shape of a key, and was made of metal with a wooden handle. Roman hoops were fitted with metal rings that slid freely along the rim. According to Martial, this was done so that the tinkling of the rings would warn passers by of the hoop’s approach: “Why do these jingling rings move about upon the rolling wheel? In order that the passers-by may get out of the way of the hoop.”
He also indicates that the metal tires of wooden cart wheels could be used as hoops: “A wheel must be protected. You make me a useful present. It will be a hoop to children, but to me a tyre for my wheel.” Martial also mentions the sport was practiced by Sarmatian boys, who rolled their hoops on the frozen Danube river. According to Strabo, one of the popular Roman venues for practicing the sport was the Campus Martius, which was large enough to accommodate a wide variety of activities.
The Roman game was to roll the hoop while throwing a spear or stick through it. For Romans, this was more an entertainment and military development not a philosophical activity. Several ancient sources praise the sport. According to Horace hoop driving was one of the manly sports. Ovid in his Tristia is more specific, putting the sport in the same category with horsemanship, javelin throwing and weapon practice: Usus equi nunc est, levibus nunc luditur armis, Nunc pila, nunc celeri volvitur orbe trochus. It was also presented as a virtue in the Distichs of Cato, which enjoin youth to Trocho lude; aleam fuge – “Play with the hoop, flee the dice.”
CE medical text by Antyllus, preserved in an anthology of Oribasius, Emperor Julian’s physician, describes hoop rolling as a form of physical and mental therapy. Antyllus indicates that at first the player should roll the hoop maintaining an upright posture, but after warming up he can begin to jump and run through the hoop. Such exercises, he holds, are best done before a meal or a bath, as with any physical exercise.