Talk:Episkyros

Not like rugby
"The teams would try to throw the ball over the heads of the other team. There was a white line between the teams and another white line behind each team" If the ball could be thrown forwards then it was nothing like rugby. You are stupid!!!

-- PBS (talk) 02:27, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The sources clearly say Episkyros resembled (it was like) rugby football. The Cat and the Owl (talk) 07:38, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Which source? -- PBS (talk) 08:28, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I see you have added in "or north American football" which source makes that claim? -- PBS (talk) 08:32, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * You are right about north American football, the source says "like a hybrid of north American football...", therefore I'm removing the claim. The Cat and the Owl (talk) 09:01, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Nigel M. Kennell, in The gymnasium of virtue: education & culture in ancient Sparta p. 61 does not claim that the game resembled rugby. Kennell writes "Episkuros would have seemed to our modern eyes like a hybrid of North American football, rugby, and a sort of netless volleyball". The Norman Gardiner source -- Athletics in the Ancient World, p. 235 -- does not make the claim that you say it does, nor does Nigel Guy Wilson in Encyclopedia of ancient Greece p. 310, he writes "A little like rugby football without any kicking". Gardiner writes "It is not in harpastum but in a very different game, episkyros, that we really find anticipations of Rugby football, at least in the arrangement of the playing field" To take that sentence and  extrapolate "Episkyros was an ancient Greek ball game resembling rugby football" is WP:SYN. The most that can be said is that the playing field resembled a rugby pitch. -- PBS (talk) 09:49, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Well pointed out, but as I said in Talk:Rugby footballwhat about these sources?


 * LSJ definition
 * Nigel Wilson, Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece, Routledge, 2005, p. 310
 * Steve Craig states that some do and some don't, however in spite of Harris statement he points out that "large parts of modern rugby are played without kicking the ball".  p. 104
 * Sports and games of medieval cultures, by Sally E. D. Wilkins. The Cat and the Owl (talk) 09:57, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

In Rugby the ball has to be passed backwards. There is nothing to say that the ball can only be passed backwards in episkuros and kicking is a very important part of rugby particularly union. Most points in union are scored by kicking. It seems to me that episkyros and rubgby have less in common than baseball and cricket, and the sources do not support the claim that "Episkyros was an ancient Greek ball game resembling rugby football" this is WP:SYN -- PBS (talk) 10:36, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Actually my edits were based on LSJ definition of ἐπίσκυρος which states "resembling Rugby football" so I tried to add more sources to that. The Cat and the Owl (talk) 10:43, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Then use an inline attribution to that source, as we report verifiability and not truth, but do not include it as fact in the passive narrative voice of the article as it is clearly an opinion and not a very accurate one. -- PBS (talk) 11:04, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * User talk:The Cat and the Owl do play or watch rugby union? -- PBS (talk) 11:07, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * No, not at all. Why? The Cat and the Owl (talk) 11:36, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Because if you did you would know that a fundamental part of rugby is the rules that prohibit the forward passing of the ball -- it can only be passed backwards. This means for a team to advance up the pitch towards the goal line, the ball must either be kicked up the pitch or carried up the pitch in hand.] If a player is in danger of being tackled, he has to pass it to a team mate behind him, or kick it.This makes it fundamentally different from the game of Episkuros as described here. The offside law is much stricter in rugby than it is in soccer, as all active team members are always behind the ball (in both half of the pitch). Let me give you an example. If a person kicks a ball down the pitch if any player is standing in front of the kicker they can not interfere with play until the kicker runs up the pitch and is between them and the oppositions goal line. The laws of rugby are much more complicated than those of soccer and although to the uninitiated the game looks like a mob of undisciplined soccer players chasing after the ball (the way young children play soccer until they learn to spread out) it is nothing like that. Only someone who does not know the game of rugby could possibly think that rugby and the game of Episkuros as described in the sources had anything but a superficial appearance in common. This is why I say that if as we report verifiability and not truth, and it is an opinion LSJ editors that Episkuros resembled rugby, (not a fact), so [[WP:ASF] should be used. -- PBS (talk) 12:30, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

As far as I can tell none of the sources quoted are an expert on rugby football and as such they are not qualified to make an expert analysis of the similarities or otherwise of the two games. Do you have a source by a group of experts in both the texts about this ancient game and rugby football to be able to draw an expert opinion on how similar they were? If not then the opinions expressed are not those of reliable sources. -- PBS (talk) 00:26, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Episkyros. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20100325214649/http://library.thinkquest.org:80/C0115986/origin.html to http://library.thinkquest.org/C0115986/origin.html

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Decoration on "the European Cup soccer trophy"
The reference (no.17 at present) claiming that the greek vase decoration is reproduced the European Cup seems wrong, or most unlikely, to me. There are numerous photographs of the cup on the internet, some quite big (9Mb) and while they don't show the base or the inside of it (the figure could conceivably be there!), I couldn't find it in any of them.

Mr Wingate is apparently not a european nor a football enthusiast, for he calls the European Cup "the European Cup soccer trophy". I infer that he may not know what he's talking about, and may be repeating something, but garbling it. Maybe it is on some other cup.

Someone may find a photograph proving him right, but until that happens, perhaps "It is claimed that" could be added before the claim, though I would prefer to see the claim removed.

Nick Barnett (talk) 23:04, 4 August 2016 (UTC)