"A palaestra is -- was -- the part in the public baths where the Romans would exercise their body, or play games with a balls, one team against the other, throwing it with their hands or kicking with their feet, according to rules: - there were different rules, different games. Men played that, and also women. We played that as well, at the academy King Theodoric had made for the sons of his nobles, at Regium; but my friend Totila was ever better at such pastimes than I was."

Teja shrugs. "So what you played was similar, only in the water?"