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Ancient Greeks, who had originally made the pieces from astragali, or the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 mans 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 soldierstones).

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 ones pieces across the board to the final square. If you
landed on a square that had an opponents piece already on it, that piece
would return to (their) square one. If two or more opponents 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 spinoff 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 :
CCCCCC
BBBBBB
AAAAAA

AAAAAA
DDDDDD
EEEEEE

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!
REJECT THE WINNINGS.
END THE DECEIT, THE
MADNESS AND THE
GREED.
THE CIRCUS IS FULL, AN
ENORMOUS CLAMOR, THE
GATES ARE BULGING.

SPERNE LUCRUM
VERSAT MENTES
INSANA CUPIDO
CIRCUS PLENUS
CLAMOR INGENS
IANUAE TENSAE

VENARI LAVARI
LUDERE RIDERE
OCCEST VIVERE
ABEMUS IN CENA
PULLUM PISCEM
PERNAM PAONEM

HUNTING, BATHING,
PLAYING GAMES AND
LAUGHING, THIS IS THE
LIFE.
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.

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 opponents
pieces is removed from the board and the game is won by the player who
reduces an opponents remaining pieces to two.

Example of a mill

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 opponents 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 opponents 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 owners 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 dellOrso. 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
Schdler, Ulrich, Brenjagd 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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