Trochus
τροχός
Trochus (τροχός, κρίκος), a hoop (Artemid. 1.55;--Ov. Tr. 3.12, 19; Art. Am. 3.338, &c.). The Greek and Roman boys used to exercise themselves like ours by trundling a hoop. It was a bronze ring, and had sometimes bells attached to it (Mart. 11.21, 2; 14.168, 169). It was propelled by means of a hook with a wooden handle, called clavis (Propert. 4.14) and ἐλατήρ. From the Greeks this custom passed to the Romans, who consequently adopted the Greek term (Hor. Carm. 3.24.57). The hoop was used at the GYMNASIUM (Propert. l.c.; Ovid, Ov. Tr. 2.485); and therefore, on one of the gems in the Stosch Collection at Berlin, which is engraved in the subjoined woodcut, it is accompanied by the vase of oil and the laurel branch, the signs of effort and of victory. On each side of this we have represented another gem from the same collection. Both of these exhibit naked youths trundling the hoop by means of the hook or key. These show the size of the hoop, which in the middle figure has also three small rings or bells on its circumference. (Winckelmann, Desc. des Pierres Gravéyes, pp. 452-455.)
On the use of τροχὸς to denote the potter's wheel, see FICTILE (Blümner, Privatalterth. 293; Marquardt, Privatleben, 836.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.