HARPASTUM Game

On Saturday 18 September (1 PM SLT) our Legio will reenact the play of Harpastum, one of the main ancestors of modern football/rugby.

The rules of the game were probably very simple and it was surely very rude. Legionairs loved it, but also civilians did, as watchers, but also as players. The ball was quite hard, in leather stuffed with wool or oakum. The number of players was variable, depending on their availability and on the dimensions of the field, that was often extemporary, the best being in sand. They were divided in 2 teams and the teams had maybe to carry or launch the ball beyond the farest side of the opposite field. Another interpretation is that the players had to keep the ball in their own half-field avoiding the opponents to take it, a sort of inverted football.

The version we are adopting is quite similar to an intermediate ancestor, the so called Soccer in costume, that is still played in Florence, Italy, assuming that it is the closest game to harpastum, from a chronological and topographical point of view: its first documentation in fact is in the 2nd half of the XV century.

All the citizens are invited to watch the game, or to take part in it. In this case they have to sign themselves on the apposite board in the fort of the XIII, in Ostia.