Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Trigon

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rich, Anthony (1849). The illustrated companion to the Latin dictionary, and Greek lexicon. p. vi. OCLC 894670115. https://archive.org/details/illustratedcompa00rich. 

TRIGON. A small ball, hard stuffed, and covered with leather, for playing a game designated by the same name. (Mart. iv. 19. xii. 83.) The example (Trigon/1.1) is from an Etruscan bronze; the stitching of the leather is plainly indicated, and the size of the ball may be imagined from the size of the hand, that of a child's, which holds it.

2. The game played with a ball or balls of the kind just described. (Hor. Sat. i. 6. 126.) It is supposed that three persons were required to make out the game, who stood in the relative positions occupied by the three points of a triangle, so that each would have an opponent in front of him, on his right and left; and as expertness in the use of the left hand is mentioned as essential to a good player (Mart. xiv. 46.), it is further inferred that each one was furnished with two balls, which he had to deliver right and left, and catch in the same manner. But this account depends more upon conjecture than positive evidence, as no representation of the game, sufficiently decisive to establish the fact, has yet been discovered.

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