Palaestra
The yard would have been filled with skammatapits where wrestlers and pankratiasts would have practiced. A skamma ("dug-up part") was an area where the soil had been turned over and covered with a thick layer of sand to provide a firm foundation for the wrestlers. Because wrestlers may have had to compete in rainy weather, there were two skamma in the palaestra: a dry one and a wet one. Wrestlers called the mud in the wet skamma "beeswax".