n all
over Greece putting up their booths, as Xenophon says, wherever money
and silly people could be found. These frequently amused the guests at
drinking feasts with their tricks. The reputation of this class of
people was anything but above suspicion, as is proved by the verse of
Manetho ("Apotheles," IV., 276), in which they are described as the
"birds of the country, the foulest brood of the city." Their tricks
were innumerable, and outvied in boldness and ingenuity those of our
conjurors, barring, of course such as are founded on the modern
discoveries of natural science. Male and female jugglers jumped
forwards and backwards over swords or tables; girls threw up and
caught again a number of balls or hoops to the accompaniment of a
musical instrument; others displayed an astounding skill with their
feet and toes while standing on their hands. Rope-dancers performed
the most dangerous dances and _salti-mortali_. In Rome even elephants
were trained to mount the rope. Flying-machines of a construction
unknown to us are also mentioned, on which bold aeronauts traversed
the air. Alkiphron tells a story about a peasant who, on seeing a
juggler pulling little bullets from the noses, ears, and heads of the
spectators, exclaimed: "Let such a beast never enter my yard, or else
everything would soon disappear." Descriptions of these tricks are
frequent in ancient writers, particularly in the indignant invectives
of the early fathers of the Church. Amongst the pictures of female
jugglers in all kinds of impossible postures, can be seen a girl
performing the dangerous sword-dance, described by Plato. It consists
in her turning somersaults forwards and backwards across the points of
three swords stuck in the ground. A similar picture we see on a vase
of the Berlin Museum. Another vase shows a female juggler dressed in
long drawers standing on her hands, and filling with her feet a
kantharos from a krater placed in front of her. She holds the handle
of the kantharos with the toes of her left foot, while the toes of her
other foot cling round the stem of the kyathos used for drawing the
liquor. A woman sitting in front of her performs a game with three
balls, in which the other artiste also seems to take a part. In
another, a girl in a rather awkward position is shooting an arrow from
a bow.

Of social games played by the topers we mention, besides the
complicated kottabos, the games played on a board or with dice. Homer
alread