Roman Games

As taught by: Guillaume de Pyrenees

Edited by: Jeff Hambre

Roman Games

As taught by Guillaume de Pyrenees

The Romans enjoyed a wide variety of games and sporting

events. Indeed, there can be little doubt that the urge to

play, and often to gamble, was very much a part of the

Roman character. Games covered here include Tali and

Tropa (Knucklebones), Tesserae (Dice), Latrunculi

(Chess), Calculi (Checkers), Duodecim Scripta (Twelve

Lines), Felix Sex (Lucky Sixes), Merels, Rota, Terni

Lapilli, (three Morris games), Tabula (Backgammon),

and others. Some of the rules for of these games are not

well known, but are reconstructions are presented here.

Tali and Tropa

Tali, commonly known today as Knucklebones, was perhaps the most

popular game played among the Romans. It resembled the game of dice

except that sets of marked bones were used. Tali was inherited from the

Ancient Greeks, who had originally made the pieces from astragali, or the

knucklebones of sheep or goats, like the ones pictured below. Notice the talus

on the bottom, which is made of brass. They were often fashioned from silver,

gold, ivory, marble, wood, bone, bronze, glass, terracotta, or precious gems.

The original shape of the bone, however, was preserved. These shapes would

sit on one of four sides when dropped.

The four sides of the talus were inscribed with symbols or Roman numerals,

and each had a different value of 1, 3, 4 or 6. Four tali were dropped from a

moderate height over a gaming table or the ground. There were variations on

scoring and betting, but the four tali were simply added after each roll to get

the score for that roll, with the following exceptions:

- Venus/Aphrodite: All four with a different side (1-3-4-6) This is the highest

roll possible.

- 19 This is the second highest roll. (6-6-6-1) and (6-6-4-3) both add up to 19,

but (6-6-6-1) is counted as higher in the case of a tie.

- 14 This is the third highest roll. (6-6-1-1) and (4-4-3-3) both add up to 14,

but (6-6-1-1) is counted as higher in the case of a tie.

- Senio (6,x,x,x) a single six and anything is lower than all except Vultures.

- Vultures - all the same, counts in down from (6-6-6-6) to (1-1-1-1), which is

also referred to as Cani or Dogs.

Tropa was played with much the same rules as Tali, but instead of simply

dropping the bones, they were tossed into a glass jar, adding an element of

skill. Presumably, only numeric values were counted in cases where all four

tali did not count.

Players take turns throwing the tali and whomever got the highest roll won

the round and collected the pot. In a variation played by the Emperor

Augustus, anyone throwing the Dogs put 4 coins in the pot, and the first

player to throw a Venus would take all.

Tesserae, or dice, were not so much a game of themselves, but were used in

a wide variety of games. Greeks tended to favor using three dice at a time

while Romans often preferred to use two. From about 350 BC on, dice became

more used and tali less so. Also, as gambling became outlawed, it moved

indoors into private clubs. Markers started to take the place of money in

wagers, much in the same manner as modern casinos. The dice often had a

pattern of two or three concentric circles for pips or were carved into

interesting shapes while maintaining the frame of a cube.

Latrunculi, Petteia, Calculi

Latrunculi means “robber-soldiers” or “mercenaries” and was the most

popular thinking man’s game in the Roman Empire. Numerous boards have

been found and they vary in size, but the most common size is 8 by 8.

Latrunculi most certainly derives from the Greek game Petteia, which also

means “pebbles.” Plato tells us that Petteia originally came from Egypt.

In the book Onomasticon, the Greek writer Pollux describes Petteia as

follows:

The game played with many pieces is a board with spaces

disposed among lines: the board is called the “city” and each

piece is called a “dog;” the pieces are of two colors, and the art of

the game consists in taking a piece of one color by enclosing it

between two of the other color.

Boards varied in size. Some boards were 8x8, 8x7, or 9x10. It may be

impossible to determine which of these boards were for what game, but the

size of the board may not have affected the style of play. Boards for all these

games, therefore, may have been interchangeable. Boards were made out of a

variety of materials and sometimes, though rarely, checkered. They were

typically made of a simple grid.

Rules (Petteia)

1. Use either an 8 x 8 board or a 12 x 8 board.

2. Stones are lined up on the first line as shown on the

board diagram, and Black plays first.

3. Stones move as rooks in chess: orthogonally

(horizontally or vertically, but not diagonally).

4. A single stone is captured when it is surrounded on

two orthogonal sides.

5. Multiple stones can be captured when surrounded

on two orthogonal sides.

6. A stone can be played inside two enemy stones without being captured.

7. The outside walls cannot be used to capture men.

8. First player to kill all his opponents stones wins.

9. A player can win by blocking up the enemy stones such that they cannot

move.

Rules (Latrunculi):

1. Use 12 x 8 board arranged as above, or a 10 x 11 with the king centered

between 5 men.

2. Stones are lined up as shown on the board diagram, and Black plays first.

3. Stones may move any number of spaces in the horizontal or vertical

direction.

4. Eagles cannot be captured but can be immobilized.

5. A single stone is captured if it is surrounded on two sides (same as petteia).

6. The outside walls cannot be used to capture men.

7. First player to block up or kill all the enemy stones and immobilize the

enemy eagle wins.

Calculi

This game is the familiar game of ‘Five in a Row’, which was played on the

same boards as Latrunculi. This game has been named Calculi which means

“stones” (or “pebbles” or “counters”) in Latin. The Romans referred to

this game as Ludus Calculorum, “the game of stones”, but the references

are general and unclear. Some experts believe the Romans used the term

Ludus Calculorum to refer to any game played with stones including Ludus

Latrunculorum. This view can lead to confusion between the games, and

therefore the name Calculi has been coined to distinguish this game from

Latrunculi.

Stones were used for counting before the abacus was introduced, hence the

word ‘calculate’. Some historians and archeologists have referred to this game

as Roman Draughts or Checkers because of the similarity of the board and

pieces. However, few boards were checkered in black and white; many were

just made of lines.

This game requires a bit larger board, and a lot more stones, than Latrunculi,

but can be played on 8 x 8 boards. Some large bags of stones have been found,

which include roundels (gambling chips) as well as glass latro (glass soldier-

stones).

Rules: 1. Black plays first.

2. First person to line up five stones in a row orthogonally or diagonally wins.

3. It is illegal to make a “double open-ended three” unless one is forced to do

so.

4. If the board becomes filled, the game is a draw.

A double open-ended three, or three in a row simultaneously in two

directions, is banned because it is too easy to win, and occurs frequently. This

rule makes for a much more interesting game, and leads to the strategy in

which one tries to make a double “three and a four,” which is like a double

open-ended three, except that one line is made of four in a row. At left are

some stones, a bowl, a die, and a board fragment that were found in a

settlement in Roman Britain.

Duodecim Scripta

Duodecim Scripta means “Twelve Lines” and was played on a board like the

one above. Two players sat across from each other and placed their 15 black

or white pieces (presumably stacked) on the first square on their side of the

board. They then each tossed a set of three dice from a cup and would move

their pieces according to the value of the throw.

The Roman painting below shows two players tossing dice from a cup. They

are most likely playing Duodecim Scripta (or the equivalent game of Felix

Sex) and are probably gambling.

The object is to get all one’s pieces across the board to the final square. If you

landed on a square that had an opponent’s piece already on it, that piece

would return to (their) square one. If two or more opponent’s pieces were

already on the square, then it could not be occupied. Presumably you would

be forced to fall short, or rearrange the moves of your own pieces.

Some of the squares had names. Square 14 was called Antigonus. Square 19

was Summus. Square 23 was Divus. The special meaning, if any, of these

names is not certain.

Obviously this game has a great deal in common with modern Backgammon

and with Egyptian Senet. In fact, Duodecim Scripta may derive from its

Egyptian precursor, since Senet dates to about 1000 years before the

founding of Rome in 753 BCE.

Some historians believe that Duodecim Scripta is the same as Felix Sex. They

have assumed that an extra row was added to create 36 squares, and that the

squares were changed to letters so as to form words. But why they would

continue to call the game “Twelve Lines” when there were neither twelve

items nor any lines is unexplained by proponents of this theory.

Games sometimes split into two major variations. Duodecim Scripta may

have led to the development of Felix Sex, but it most certainly led to the spin-

off version called Alea or Tabula. And Tabula is the forerunner of a group of

similar games played in Medieval Europe (Ad Elta Stelpur & Sixe-Ace) and

Arabia (Nard) and, directly from that, Backgammon.

Felix Sex

This game was played all across the Roman Empire, in taverns, brothels,

private homes, and frontier forts. Numerous boards have been found from

Egypt to Britain, but especially in and around Rome. However, this game did

not seem to have a name to distinguish it from either Duodecim Scripta or

Tabula. We call this game Lucky Sixes, in Latin, Felix Sex. Although this

game appears to be the same as Duodecim Scripta, the matter is not entirely

clear.

Many believe this game is actually a modified version of Duodecim Scripta,

with an extra line down the middle. Why the name would remain the same is

difficult to understand, with the Romans being such a precisely spoken

people. Even the game alea came to be called tabula since, although it was

gambling, it was played on a board or table. In this game of six lettered

words, there are neither twelve words or letters, and there are no lines at all.

Nevertheless, this is the generally accepted style of play, and, in this form, it

bears a strong resemblance to Egyptian Senet, which had 30 squares. It may

be, speculatively, that the words simply disguised the board, since gambling

was technically illegal.

The word scripta is generally considered to mean ‘lines’, but, according to

Austin, could also be interpreted as ‘markings’. Some sources define scripta

as ‘writing’, and in that sense it becomes equivalent to ‘words’. The problem,

however, is that these Felix Sex boards contain neither 12 markings nor 12

words, but 36 letters or squares.

The picture shown above is redrawn from a board specimen in the British

Museum. This board is not broken off at the top or bottom; the half-circles are

engraved at the edge of the board. This is typical of many boards found like

this. The proportions of the board suggest that playing pieces, the size of

typical 20 mm bone roundels, could have been placed over the letters.

Consider the redrawn image of a complete gaming board shown to the right.

This board was found at Qustul in Egypt, along with 15 black pieces, 15

white pieces, 5 dice and a fritillis (dice box). It dates no later than the 5th

century AD. The similarity to the Felix Sex board is striking. The circles in

the center and proportions seem almost identical. The only problem is that

no-one seems to know if this is really a duodecim scripta board either.

Take a look also at the gaming board shown to the left. This board was found

in Britain, and belonged to a soldier of the XX Legion in the 2nd century AD.

The resemblance to the above boards is, once again, striking. Along with this

board were found three dice, which would seem to confirm our understanding

that three dice, not two or five, were used in this game.

Most probably these are the same game, and an intriguing clue comes from

the Roman port of Ostia, in Italy. A gaming board was found using not words,

but letters alone, arranged as follows :

C C C C C C

B B B B B B

A A A A A A

A A A A A A

D D D D D D

E E E E E E

The above arrangement strongly suggests what the proper direction of

movement is in this game, and also seems to confirm the purpose of the Felix

Sex boards. The rules for this game, the ‘Duodecim Scripta’ type rules, can

now be generally formulated.

In this version of the game, three dice would have been tossed. The 15 pieces

move first up the center line of letters, and then over to the left. Finally they

would travel to the opposite side of letters and then off the board. As in

Tabula, no pieces could move beyond the first ‘word’ until all pieces had

entered the board. Likewise, no pieces could exit the board until all pieces

had landed on the last word.

Felix Sex Gaming Tables The marvelous thing about this game is that the words tended to spell out

clever sentences. Mostly these related to gambling and good fortune, or

matters with military overtones, indicating soldiers often played this game.

Sometimes they were just words of encouragement, somewhat like fortune

cookies:

LUDITE SECURI

QVIBVS AES EST

SEMPER IN ARCA

PLAY WITHOUT CONCERN

WHEN YOUR PURSE IS

FULL

PARTHI OCCISI

BRITTO VICTUS

LUDITE ROMANI

THE PARTHIANS ARE

DEAD, THE BRITONS

DEFEATED, SPORT,

ROMANS!

SPERNE LUCRUM

VERSAT MENTES

INSANA CUPIDO

REJECT THE WINNINGS.

END THE DECEIT, THE

MADNESS AND THE

GREED.

CIRCUS PLENUS

CLAMOR INGENS

IANUAE TENSAE

THE CIRCUS IS FULL, AN

ENORMOUS CLAMOR, THE

GATES ARE BULGING.

VENARI LAVARI

LUDERE RIDERE

OCCEST VIVERE

HUNTING, BATHING,

PLAYING GAMES AND

LAUGHING, THIS IS THE

LIFE.

ABEMUS IN CENA

PULLUM PISCEM

PERNAM PAONEM

FOR DINNER: CHICKEN,

FISH, HAM, PEACOCK

This set comes from a table in a tavern. Although gambling

was technically illegal, menus written in hexameter verse

were certainly not.

SITIBI TESSEL

LAFAVE TEGOTE

STVDIO VINCAM

To themselves

dice/watchword

LAFAVE bury/conceal/or

protect

To study conquer

LEVATE DALOCU

LUDERE NESCIS

IDIOTA RECEDE

GET UP AND LEAVE, YOU

DON'T KNOW THIS GAME,

IDIOT, QUIT!

Numerous boards have been found, all unique. Hexameter verses were

published that could be used by anyone, although not all of these verses were

truly hexameter. One set of these was called, surely in the best of humor,

“The Lines of the Twelve Philosophers.”

Merrelus, Terni Lapilli, Rota

Merrelus (Nine Mens Morris or Merels) is another game the Romans

borrowed from the Egyptians. It is a game for two people, played on a board

with nine pieces, pegs or counters each.

The board has three concentric squares linked at the mid-points of their

sides. This provides 24 intersecting points arranged in 16 lines of three.

Example of a mill

Play is divided into three stages, but the object throughout the game is to get

three pieces in a line - called a mill. On forming a mill, one of the opponent’s

pieces is removed from the board and the game is won by the player who

reduces an opponent’s remaining pieces to two.

The opening stage begins with an empty board. Each player has nine pieces

which are placed one at a time in turn on any vacant point on the board until

both have played all nine. If a mill - a line of three - is made, the player

making it removes any one of the opponent’s pieces that is not itself part of a

mill, unless there are no other pieces to choose from.

Once a piece is removed from the board, it takes no further part in the game.

It is important to note that mills can only be made along the horizontal and

vertical lines on the board, never across the diagonals where no connecting

lines are marked.

The middle stage starts when all the pieces have been used. Play continues

alternately with opponents moving one piece to any adjacent point. A couple

of tactics are often used in this stage.

First, once a mill is formed, it may be opened by moving one piece from the

line and closed by returning it to its original position in the next move.

Alternatively, to create a running mill, opening one mill will close another

one so that an opponent’s piece is removed on every turn.

A player who is blocked, i.e. is unable to move any piece, loses the game.

The end of the game comes when one player is reduced to less than three

pieces.

Rota

Rota is played with the same rules as Merrelus, with the following

differences:

– Each player gets three playing pieces.

– Players take turns putting their game pieces on any space on the circle

including the middle.

– The player who gets three in a row first wins.

Terni Lapilli

Terni Lapilli boards are identical to modern Tic-Tac-Toe boards. However,

although Terni Lapilli boards are found throughout the Empire, scratched on

walls, floors, and roofs, no Xs and Os accompany the markings. It would seem

to imply that playing pieces were being used for this game. If so, they would

surely be the same as used for similar games (Latrunculi and Tabula).

Bolesden says that three pieces were used in this game but if that is true,

this is not Tic-Tac-Toe. A counter-argument to this is that the game was

played by making non-permanent marks (How else to play on the wall?) and

the replaying as desired.

Judging from the number of Terni Lapilli boards found around Rome it would

seem this game was more popular than modern Tic-Tac-Toe. We may

conclude from this that it was not Tic-Tac-Toe since this is not really a game

and could not sustain such interest.

One obvious possibility is that the game is identical to Three Mens Morris.

This game is played with the same rules as Nine Mens Morris, with the

following differences:

– Each player gets three playing pieces.

– Players take turns putting their game pieces on any space on the board.

– The player who gets three in a row first wins.

Tabula

In Roman antiquity this game was known as Alea, meaning “gambling”, but

came to be called Tabula, “board” or “table”, since it was played on a board.

Alea dates back to several centuries BC and appears to have evolved directly

from Duodecim Scripta.

Tabula might have evolved from Senet and in turn produced a number of

offspring. Popular with soldiers, Tabula reached Arabia by Roman expansion

into the Mideast in the first century AD. Tabula spawned a series of games

throughout Europe, such as Ad Elta Stelpur in Iceland, Taefle and Fayles in

England (1025 AD), Sixe-Ace in Spain (1251 AD), and Tourne-case in France.

The Arabian game Nard appears to be a slightly modifed version of Tabula,

perhaps incorporating aspects of Egyptian Senet. Nard spread to the Far

East in about 220 AD and became widely popular.

The general principles of these race-type games are well known, and detailed

explanations exist in Medieval documents for some of the European variants.

Our knowledge of the rules of Tabula, however, comes primarily from the

record of a game played by the emperor Zeno in 480. Zeno found himself in

such a remarkably untenable position, that the details of the game have been

preserved by posterity. Zeno, playing white, threw a 2/5/6 with the dice and

was forced to break up his three pairs, as his men were blocked across the

board. No other moves were possible, and the result is ruinous for white.

Tabula is the gambling game of which the Emperor Claudius was most fond.

About 50 AD, Claudius wrote a history of the game of Tabula which,

unfortunately, has not survived. His imperial carriage was equipped with an

alveus, a Tabula playing board, so that he could play while travelling.

Tabula is also the game which was primarily responsible for the gambling

mania which swept Rome prior to its being declared illegal under the

Republic. The fine for gambling at any other time except the Saturnalia was

four times the stakes, although this law was only weakly and sporadically

enforced.

Rules:

1. The board, as illustrated above, can be a backgammon board. Each player

has 15 pieces.

2. All pieces enter from square I and travel counterclockwise.

3. Three dice are thrown, and the three numbers determine the moves of

between 1 and 3 pieces.

4. Any part of a throw which can not be used is lost, but a player must use

the whole value of the throw if possible.

5. If a player landed a piece on a point with one enemy piece, the enemy piece

was removed from the board and had to re-enter the game on the next throw.

6. If a player had 2 or more men on a point, this position was closed to the

enemy, and these men could not be captured.

7. No player may enter the second half of the board until all men have

entered the board.

8. No player may exit the board until all pieces have entered the last quarter.

This means that if a single man is hit, the remaining pieces may be frozen in

the quarter until he re-enters and catches up with them again.

Playing pieces and boards:

The gaming pieces used in Tabula were evidently the same as the bone

roundels used in other games such as Duodecim Scriptorum and Calculi. The

colors seem to have been mostly black and white, or blue and white, but some

other colors have been found. Occasionally colored glass pieces, metal, ivory,

or stone were used. Even coins could have been used as game pieces. Boards

varied in size, without affecting the style of play. Some boards were made of

silver, most were made of wood, but some were made of stone or marble.

Gambling chips looked essentially the same as the roundels, but were

scratched (on the backside) with numerals representing money values. Game

pieces were also distinguishable by the fact that they were often inscribed on

the back with the owner’s name or initials.

Ludus Ursus

There is archeological evidence that bear hunt games were played among the

Romans, but no written records. Thus the rules that follow are reconstructed

based on the modern Il Gioco dell’Orso. Play starts with the black Bear piece

in the center of the board and three white Hunter pieces on the circle around

it or around the larger semi-circle at one end of the board. Play alternates

between players with the Bear going first. The Hunters should always win, so

the object is to do so in the fewest number of moves.

References

Austin, R. G., Roman Board Games, Greece and Rome

Balsdon, J. P. V. D., Life and Leisure in Ancient Rome

Cicero, De Oratorio

Kowalski, Wladyslaw Jan, Roman Board Games

Nova Roma, Terni Lapilli

Plautus, Plays

Plutarch, Lives

Pollux, Onomasticon

Pritchard, David, The Family Book of Games

Schädler, Ulrich, Bärenjagd in Augusta Raurica? Hauszeitschrift 1. Halbjahr 2002

(http://www.augustaraurica.ch/publ/hauszeit/hauszeitschrift_2002_1.pdf)

Winther, M., Bear games: Hunt Games from Roman Antiquity? May, 2008

(http://hem.passagen.se/melki9/beargames.htm)

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