paganica

Noun

paganica

1. (historical) A Roman ball stuffed with feathers, used in a game that is sometimes considered a precursor to golf (since early golf balls had a similar construction).
   • The folliculus was merely a smaller follis, apparently about the same size as a paganica, also a middle sized ball, stuffed with feathers, and therefore harder than the follis, which was only filled with air, but tenderer than the pila, which was probably as hard and heavy as our tennis-ball....1875, Sydney Smith, The Edinburgh Review, volume 141, A. and C. Black, pages 72–73
2. The game itself.
   • An attempt, a rather lame one, however, has been made to prove that golf was known to the Romans, or at least that a game called Paganica resembled it.1896, Harry Stirling Crawfurd Everard, Golf in theory and practice: some hints to beginners, George Bell & sons, page 4
   • Beginning with paganica in Ancient Rome, golf has had many ancestors in many distant lands, all similar in one way or another to the game we know today.2002, Robert Muir Graves, Geoffrey S. Cornish, Classic Golf Hole Design, John Wiley and Sons, page 15