Editing Ball (section)

===Ancient Greeks===
Among the [[Ancient Greece|ancient Greeks]], games with balls (σφαῖραι) were regarded as a useful subsidiary to the more violent athletic exercises, as a means of keeping the body supple, and rendering it graceful, but were generally left to boys and girls. Of regular rules for the playing of ball games, little trace remains, if there were any such. The names in Greek for various forms, which have come down to us in such works as the Ὀνομαστικόν of [[Julius Pollux]], imply little or nothing of such; thus, ἀπόρραξις (''aporraxis'') only means the putting of the ball on the ground with the open hand, οὐρανία (''ourania''), the flinging of the ball in the air to be caught by two or more players; φαινίνδα (''phaininda'') would seem to be a game of catch played by two or more, where feinting is used as a test of quickness and skill. Pollux (i. x. 104) mentions a game called [[episkyros]] (ἐπίσκυρος), which has often been looked on as the origin of football. It seems to have been played by two sides, arranged in lines; how far there was any form of "goal" seems uncertain.<ref name="eb1911">{{Cite EB1911|wstitle=Ball}}</ref> It was impossible to produce a ball that was perfectly spherical;<ref name="Garland2008">{{cite book|last=Garland|first=Robert|date=2008|title=Ancient Greece: Everyday Life in the Birthplace of Western Civilization|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-R1PmAEACAAJ&q=Ancient+Greece:+Everyday+Life+in+the+Birthplace+of+Western+Civilization|publisher=Sterling|location=New York City, New York|isbn=978-1-4549-0908-8|page=96}}</ref> children usually made their own balls by inflating pig's bladders and heating them in the ashes of a fire to make them rounder,<ref name="Garland2008"/> although [[Plato]] (fl. 420s BC – 340s BC) described "balls which have leather coverings in twelve pieces".<ref>{{cite book
| author = Plato
| author-link = Plato
| editor        = Charles W. Eliot
| translator    = Benjamin Jowett
| title         = The Apology, Phædo and Crito of Plato – The Golden Sayings of Epictetus – The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius 
| chapter-url           = https://archive.org/details/harvardclassics002elio/page/107
| access-date    = May 16, 2020
| edition   = 1st
| series    = The Harvard Classics
| volume    = 2
| year      = 1909
| publisher = P. F. Collier and Son
| location  = New York
| page      = 107
| chapter   = Phædo (Dialogues of Plato)
}}</ref>