Crossword-Solution: PAGANICA 8 letters, 6 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 13

Among the Romans there appear to have been three types or sizes of ball, the _pila_, or small ball, used in catching games, the _paganica_, a heavy ball stuffed with feathers, and the _follis_, a leather ball filled with air, the largest of the three.

The cries of these dying men were heard by the senate who were assembled at the time in the _Temple of Bellona_ (restored by Appius Claudius Cæcus in the Samnite War), which stood hard by, and in front of which at the extremity of the Circus Flaminius, where the Piazza Paganica now is, stood the _Columna Bellica_, where the Ferialis, when war was declared, flung a lance into a piece of ground, supposed to represent the enemy's country, when it was not possible to do it at the hostile frontier itself.

The ordinary ball was stuffed with hair and sewn with bright or at all events coloured patches; the _paganica_, the name of which indicates a game between people _en masse_, in which the whole village (pagus) in the country took part, was a large ball stuffed with feathers; the _follis_, which was first discovered in the time of Pompey, was the largest and was full of air (κενή); of the _harpastum_ we know nothing further than that it was a small hard ball.