Mária T. Biró: The Bone Objects of the Roman Collection. (Catalogi Musei Nationalis Hungarici. Seria Archeologica 2; Budapest, 1994)

IX. ENTERTAINMENT, PLAY - 2. Games (dice, board games)

constructed from two parts. The lower part is entirely like that of jars, but there was a ca. 2-3 cm high widening part attached. Thus dice boxes are taller than bone unguentum jars although the fixing of the two parts is not discernible because the projection is plastically ribbed with double canellatures. The bottom and the lid of the dice box is, similarly to jars, decorated with concentric circles. At the lids the difference is only in the handle. While with unguentum jars a finely turned projecting bone handle is serving for lifting the lid, with dice boxes a handle would hinder the play, therefore a slight, semispherical projection serving rather for decoration is instead. If only fragments of such dice boxes are unearthed it is difficult to tell them from unguentum jars. They were probably produced in the same workshops with the very same tools. With dice cups three dice were employed, the value of the best throw was 3x6. Dice could also be used for board games as they are today. In this case dice were thrown on boards with a rim. This board was called TABULA or ALVEUS. We have no further knowledge of the rules of these games. Dice can be found in any museum collection in great numbers. (Nos. 639-668.) In the Imperial Age the backgammon game allowed by law was dicing. Dice were produced in the most diverse sizes. On smaller dice the dots were pressed in while on larger ones they were denoted by the fixed dotcircle compasses known from combs. Depending on the size of the die single or double circles were incised. On the most interesting die of the Hungarian National Museum instead of dots letters were carved. (No. 668.) The letters were placed on the die according to the numerical value of Latin letters: VA EST ORTI VALLA VIANNA (CIL. XIII. 10.035.24.) Board games (TABULA LUSORIA) A group of board games corresponds to draughts resp. to mill-game. The other variety reminds one rather of chess. I have tried to reconstruct this division not according to the board of games but according to the pieces employed. Board games played with flat discs. Some of these games were surely played with flat bone discs (Fig. 38.): with white or black ones. (Nos. 679-844.) Such a game is represented on a relief from Trier although Kretzschmer refers to it not as a game but as a counting disc.

117 Fig. 88. Board game with flat pieces from Athènes The concave, undecorated bone discs surviving in large numbers were used in such games. For these games a lot of discs were needed. Ludus duodecim scripta was played with 30 (1515) marbles or bone discs. They must have known today's mill-game as well, because there is a bone disc on the flat side of which a board similar to mill-game is carved. (No. 707.) Board games played with game pieces (L UD US LA TR UN MC ULOR UM) Fig. 39. Egyptian representation of the game ludus latrunculorum Beside games played with flat discs there also existed a board game in which pieces similar to chess were fighting. (The name of the pieces was LATRONES, LATRUNCULI, MILITES.) Pieces were decorated in different ways. The first such game representations survived from Egypt. We know a representation where two men are playing with dark and light pieces. (Fig. 39.) On one of the papyri of the British Museum on a game board placed before a lion and an antilope the top of one group of tall pieces is flat, while that the others is conic. Walter B. Emery