Dave’s Football Blog

It wasn’t just eastern empires that developed football games back in the day. No, the Roman Empire cultivated its own game called Harpastum, and while history can’t agree on what the rules of that game were, I think it’s pretty certain that it didn’t look anything like this:

Seriously, doesn’t that look like one of those drawings from those Children’s Bible Stories books you used to see in your local dentist’s office when you were a kid? You know, the ones that tried to convince you that every character in the Bible was a.) pretty, and b.) Caucasian?

No, the Roman Empire wasn’t pretty, but it was effective, and Harpastum proved to be effective as both training for soldiers and entertainment for spectators — at least, until they got a taste for gladiator bloodshed. Harpastum was a rugby-like game which could best be described as a combination of “Keep Away” and “Smear the Queer.” Teams battled to keep the ball on their side of the pitch for as long as possible, while opponents tried to steal the ball and move it over to their side. Only the ball handler could be tackled, so teams had to master more tricky passes than a run-and-shoot offense.

How they kept score remains a mystery. For all I know, they had an official with a sundial and an hourglass, and every time the ball moved from one side of the field to the other, the ref turned the hourglass over. By the end of the hour, whichever team had the most sand on its side of the hourglass won the match. There was no Harpastum on cloudy days — unless they had two hourglasses, and you had to have some really rich refs for that.

Of course, that concept breaks down completely when you realize that hourglasses weren’t popular until the 14th century or so. (Damn that Wikipedia.) So maybe scores were based on completed passes or kicks, which made holding the ball on your side of the pitch stupid. I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone else does, either.

What we do know, though, is that Romans swiped a lot of concepts from the Greeks, and football was no exception. The Greeks had their own football game that was called either Episkyros or Phaininda, depending on which city you came from, and as with all their athletic contests, the Greeks played naked.

If any modern day footballers tried to recreate that scene today, charges would probably be filed. It was a different time, two millennia ago.

Oh, and there was one other story about a bunch of kids playing Harpastum in the streets, when one of them kicked the ball into a barber shop and killed a guy getting a shave. That story probably fueled the crowd’s desire to see more blades in the Coliseum…

Some also suggest that the Roman Army, which blew off steam playing Harpastum in base camp, carried the game with them to the British Isles, and that’s when the Brits first went nuts over football. Hard to tell if that’s true or not, but hey, apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, just what have the Romans ever done for us?