. Antonio Scaino dedicated his work on the ball game. Ball games were played by the Greeks of
Classical antiquity. Although it is unknown whether they used inflated balls, it is considered likely given the well documented use of "balls of wind" in
Ancient Rome, with the larger balls called , and the smaller balls called .
Suetonius described a
follis as a "ball of wind". An animal
bladder was inflated to create a ball, preferably that of a pig. In the
Middle Ages, balls were mentioned by several authors such as
Desiderius Erasmus,
Rabelais,
Calderon de la Barca,
Baltasar de Castiglione, and Italian priest Antonio da Salò Scaino, writing about an early form of
tennis.
Alfonso X of Castile banned the () with imprisonment. Early Spanish chroniclers in Mexico compared the different consistencies of the balls filled with
caoutchouc (
natural rubber) used in the indigenous game
ōllamalīztli with the "air-filled" balls used on the
Iberian Peninsula. In an important testimony,
Joan Lluís Vives (1493–1540) wrote a comparison between the (), a game played with hard balls and
gut-string rackets, and the Spanish ball game similar to and played with "balls of wind" struck with the palm of the hand. According to a book of 1840, Barcelona had a place for playing a (), but it is not clear what kind of game or games were played. The eventual arrival and discovery of rubber and synthetic polymers allowed an improvement in the performance of the balls used in many games and sports. == Scaino Antonio and his work on the ball game ==