Games, Greek and Roman

1 Games, Greek and Roman ULRICH SCHAEDLER Games discussed in this article include games with dice, board games, and games of skill played by children or adults, excluding athletic, acrobatic, and theatrical activities, as for example the Olympic and other contests, gladiatorial combats, or chariot races, although the Greek term paignion and the Latin term ludus comprise all these kinds of games. Information comes mainly from written and archaeological sources, which in some cases can be completed or explained through and compared to ethnographical evidence. Secondary evidence comes from representations of playing scenes in ancient art such as vase and wall paintings, relief, mosaics, or statuettes. The written sources are mostly limited to mentions and anecdotes in ancient literature and more often in poetry; only rarely do we find more contiguous descriptive texts (see e.g., Nux elegia and Laus Pisonis). Suetonius’ book Peri ton par Hellesi paidion is lost, but has been used by lexicographers such as Hesychius and Eusthatius. Also lost is Claudius’ book about dice games, De arte aleae. The necessary methodological attention has not always been paid in interpreting these texts: Roman authors, for example, tend to avoid the repetition of words and therefore use different names for dice (see, e.g., Seneca Apocolocyntosis 15) or counters, so that the latrones, calculi, bellatores, or milites of the ludus latrunculorum should not be taken as otherwise unattested differentiated pieces, such as in chess. Translations also often equate ancient games with modern ones such as chess or draughts, which is completely misleading. Archaeological finds of gaming material such as dice, knucklebones, counters, boards, and marbles, appear frequently among the finds in settlements and sanctuaries, but are better preserved in funerary contexts. Terracotta models of gaming tables for Pente grammai have been found among the grave goods in Attic burials of the early sixth century BCE. Marble plaques fashioned like game boards for the game of alea (see below) have been used to close tombs in several Roman catacombs. Dice and counters (with too large a variety of numbers as to allow for detailed conclusions) figure among the grave goods in Greek and Roman burials; in Nubian, Celtic, and Germanic graves the remnants of wooden gaming boards have also come to light. Nonetheless, even well-preserved or seemingly “complete” finds, such as the game board with counters found in Stanway, near Colchester in southeast England, cannot readily be interpreted without preliminary assumptions. Surprisingly, games found in private houses are extremely rare: the only example is a copy of a wooden XII scripta-board engraved before 260 CE into a marble table found in slope house 2, app. 7, at Ephesos. While wooden gaming boards were used in private homes, numerous game boards can still be seen engraved into the marble pavements of public buildings in Roman towns, especially where an important Late Antique and early Byzantine period existed (as for example at Ephesos and Aphrodisias), but they have hardly ever been systematically documented. They mostly lack a precise dating, a fact that holds especially true for the drawings on the roof of the Sety temple at Qurna, Egypt: among masons’ marks, magic symbols, and possible game boards, Coptic crosses are also found, which makes it impossible to cite the roof as evidence that the games of alquerque, mancala, and nine men’s morris existed at the time of the construction of the temple in the fourteenth century BCE or in Greek and Roman times. It is not always possible to identify game boards, which usually have the shape of a geometric pattern, nor to link them to games mentioned in the literary sources. This is the case, for example, with Minoan cup-holes as well as with the circular wheel patterns present in countless examples at Roman imperial-Byzantine sites. Although The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, First Edition. Edited by Roger S. Bagnall, Kai Brodersen, Craige B. Champion, Andrew Erskine, and Sabine R. Huebner, print pages 2841–2844. © 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2013 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. DOI: 10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah22285 2 they frequently appear near boards of known ancient games (such as XII scripta/Alea), their conventional identification as a round version of three men’s morris, proposed by Carl Blümlein in 1918, is purely conjectural. No imaginable rule makes it a playable game (Blümlein’s version does not work either), and the game is not attested elsewhere on the planet. Descriptions of rules of games are extremely rare: the only complete rule for dicing with knucklebones is given by Augustus in a letter quoted by Suetonius (Suet. Aug. 71). Other rules can be inferred from Nux Elegia, Pollux’s account, and Ovid’s short verse on three men’s morris (Ars am. 3.381–2). It should be considered that it is useless to try to reconstruct a single rule for a given game. Traditional games develop and change over time and have been played in a great number of variants, which differ from country to country, from tribe to tribe, from village to village, or even from family to family. It seems that among the Greeks and Romans, children and adults respectively played their own games. Anecdotes of adults playing with children (Augustus, Heraclitus) appear as exceptions from the rule. At their coming of age children used to offer toys to the gods, as a symbolic gesture for them leaving childhood behind. Dolls, pets, nuts, knucklebones, tops, marbles, balls, or playing at “odd and even,” “heads or tails,” and skittles are described and depicted as children’s favorite play activities together with a number of games played without the use of objects, some of which continue to be practiced in many parts of the world. Not all these games were played by both boys and girls. Certain games appear to have been particularly appreciated by girls, such as Cheli Chelone (Poll. Onom. 9.125). Miniature objects such as diminutive vases or furniture are often taken as belonging to some kind of doll’s house, although doubts may be raised about the existence of such a bourgeois toy in ancient times. As far as the games of adults are concerned, most written sources relate to men. An amusement of Greek men until about the fourth century BCE at the symposium was kottabos, a game where a drop of wine had to be flicked against a target. Nonetheless, red figure vase paintings and terracottas sometimes depict Greek women at play, especially with knucklebones (Poll. Onom. 9.126 calls pentelitha the favorite game of women) or at ephedrismos. From Ovid (Ars am. 3.356–84) we learn that, at least in his time, men and women played together and therefore played the same games. As indicated by one inscribed gaming table for alea found at Ephesos, as well as numerous written sources about playing with dice and knucklebones, most games (at least games of chance) were usually played for stakes. Some players are credited with remarkable expertise, and in some cases the behavior at play was understood to reflect the good or bad character of a person, notably the Roman emperors. Besides board and dice games, and puzzle-like games such as “morra” (micare digitis), playing with balls was popular and a favorite activity in Roman baths: different types of balls (Martial Epigr. 7.32) were used for a variety of games (Poll. Onom. 9.103–7; Isidore Etym. 18.69). It seems that playing with marbles was also an adult pastime. Lanes for playing with marbles, widespread in public places all over the Mediterranean, follow a precise scheme: two parallel starting lines followed by several rows of depressions and irregularly distributed singular depressions, with a target hole at the end. One of the board games where we know somewhat more than just the name is the Greek game “five lines” (pente grammai), played on a board with five parallel lines with the central one called “the sacred line” (Poll. Onom. 9.97; Eust. Od. 1297.28). This is the game Ajax and Achilles play in the scenes on Attic vases (from ca. 540 to 480 BCE; see the black-figured kyathos at Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels, inv. R2512). Numerous boards with two rows of five or eleven squares inscribed into the pavements of Roman sites can perhaps be interpreted as boards for Roman versions of the game. Polis (often wrongly called petteia) was played on a grid of squares with counters 3 in two colors called “dogs” (Poll. Onom. 6.206, 9.98; Eust. Il. 1290, 2; Od. 1397.45). It was played without dice (Eusthathius was confused by the double meaning of “dog” as a counter in polis and as a throw in dice games), counters being captured by enclosure from two sides. The Roman ludus latrunculorum applies the same method of capture and therefore appears to have been the same game. Three men’s morris is attested through a short description by Ovid (Ars am. 3.365–6; Tr. 2.481–2) and three types of boards: a cross-cut square, a cross-cut square with additional diagonals, and a cross-cut square with an inscribed lozenge. Nine men’s morris seems not to be attested until Byzantine times. Ludus duodecim scriptorum was the earlier Latin name of a game of the backgammon family played on a board of three rows of two by six fields. Nonius (170.22) explained scripta as “puncta tesserarum,” whence the name of the game should be understood as “the game of twelve points,” referring to the highest possible throw (see also the mosaic CIL XIV 607 from Ostia). In Isidore’s times (Etym. 18.60–4) the game was played with three dice and had changed its name accordingly to alea (played with three dice, its name “twelve points” was no longer appropriate). Magnificent marble gaming tables dating to the fifth and sixth centuries from Aphrodisias, Perge, and Ephesos testify to the high reputation this game enjoyed even in Christian times. The latest example of the game is a Soghdian wall painting from Piandzhikent (kept in the State Hermitage Museum at St. Petersburg). At least from the fifth century onwards, a two-row board was introduced, apparently influenced by the Persian game “nard.” The board is represented in a mosaic from the Kourion complex in Cyprus, and a match is described in an epigram by Agathias of Myrine (Anth. Pal. 9.482). It is not certain whether or not the term tabula was ever used as a name for that game. Mancala seems not to be mentioned in the written sources, although the typical boards with two parallel rows of depressions – two by six, but often also two by five – can still be seen at various archaeological sites in the eastern part of the Roman Empire. Unfortunately they lack precise dating, with the exception of those found in a “gaming room” in the late Roman fort at Abu Sha’ar, Red Sea, Egypt. REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS Hemelrijk, J. M. (1992) “Le jeu.” In D. Vanhove, ed., Le sport dans la Grèce antique. Du Jeu à la compétition: 19–33. Ghent. Hillbom, N. (2005) Minoan games and game boards. Lund. Höckmann, O. (1996) “Brettspiele im Didymaion.” Istanbuler Mitteilungen 46: 251–62. Lamer, H. (1927) “Lusoria tabula.” In RE 13,2: 1900–2029. Stuttgart. Mulvin, L. and Sidebotham, S. E. (2004) “Roman game boards from Abu Sha’ar (Red Sea Coast, Egypt).” Antiquity 78: 602–17. Roueché, C. (2007) “Late Roman and Byzantine game boards at Aphrodisias.” In I. F. Finkel, ed., Ancient board games in perspective: 100–5. London. Schädler, U. (1994) “Latrunculi – ein verlorenes strategisches Brettspiel der Römer.” In Homo Ludens. Der spielende Mensch, vol. 4: 47–67. Salzburg. Schädler, U. (1995) “XII Scripta, alea, tabula – new evidence for the Roman history of ‘backgammon’.” In A. J. de Voogt, ed., New approaches to board games research: 73–98. Leiden. Schädler, U. (1996) “Spielen mit Astragalen.” Archäologischer Anzeiger 1: 61–73. Schädler, U. (1998) “Mancala in Roman Asia Minor?” Board Games Studies 1: 10–25. Schädler, U. (1999) “Damnosa alea – Würfelspiel in Griechenland und Rom.” In 5000 Jahre Würfelspiel. Homo Ludens supplement: 39–58. Salzburg. Schädler, U. (2002) “The Talmud, Firdausi, and the Greek game ‘city’.” In J. Retschitzki and R. Haddad-Zubel, eds., Step by step. Proceedings of the 4th colloquium board games in academia: 91–102. Freiburg. Schädler, U. (2007) “The doctor’s game – new light on the history of ancient board games.” In 4 P. Crummy et al., eds., Stanway: an elite burial site at Camulodunum: 359–75. London. Schädler, U. (2009) “Pente grammai – the ancient Greek board game Five Lines.” In J. Nuno Silva, ed., Proceedings. Board game studies colloquium IV: 173–96. Lisbon. Taillardat, J. (1967) Suétone. Peri Blasphemion. Peri Paidion (Extraits byzantins). Paris. Väterlein, J. (1976) Roma ludens, Kinder und Erwachsene beim Spiel im antiken Rom. Amsterdam.