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Greek Board-Games

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

R. G. Austin
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Extract

The study of Greek board-games is almost wholly inconclusive, owing to the scanty and extremely imprecise evidence available. Difficulties would in any case be inevitable, since most games are better grasped in actual play than by studying a set of written rules; and here the technicalities are expressed in a foreign language and were sometimes not clear even to their users, who cheerfully omit what they do not understand, or take it for granted that the reader is familiar with the main details. Further, the games so described by our authorities had often been long obsolete. Some of the difficulties may be realized by trying to reconstruct a game of Ombre entirely from Pope’s Rape of the Lock, or a game of cricket from Dickens’ account of All Muggleton v. Dingley Dell (even with the help of Mr A. G. Macdonell’s searching critique of that famous match). Here is an example of a rather different kind, which well shows the pitfalls of unfamiliar teiminology; it is translated from K. Silex’s John Bull xu Hause, and is an attempt to explain cricket to Germans. ‘Two teams of II men oppose each other; two “wickets” are set [how ?] in the ground at a distance of 20 metres, being three wooden sticks [how high ?], over which two rods (Stäbe) are laid [how?]. The aim is to hit the wicket with a ball [how big?] or to knock off the rods with it. One side defends the wicket, the other attacks; the defenders post before each wicket [where ?] a “batsman” with a striker (Schläger): the other side opposes him with a “bowler” who tries to hit the wicket with the ball [how?]. Two men only of the defence are in actual play, the rest wait their turn’ … etc.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 14 , Issue 55 , September 1940 , pp. 257 - 271
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1940

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References

1 See Greece and Rome, IV, pp. 24 ff., 76 ff.

2 In an appendix to D. Forbes’ History of Chess (London, 1860).

3 Greece and Rome, IV, 30 ff.

4 Greece and Rome, IV, 76 ff. ; Journal of Hellenic Studies, LIV, 202 ff.; cf. H. Jackson, Journal of Philology, VII, 240 ff.

5 Greece and Rome, loc. cit.; a fairly well-preserved specimen of a Roman XII scripta board is in the Holt collection of the National Museum of Wales at Cardiff (see W. F. Grimes, Y Cymmrodor, XLI, 131 ; R. G. Austin, Archaeologia Cambrensis, XCIII, 250).

6 i.e. ‘a die’, but later used of a board-game with dice.

7 I must here withdraw a too hasty footnote to my paper in Greece and Rome, IV, 25, in which I put over-credulous belief in Eustathius and denied that ‘poleis’ was akin to the Roman latrunculi.

8 I owe this and other information, together with much helpful criticism, to Mr H. J. R. Murray, author of A History of Chess (Oxford, 1913).

9 cf. Greece and Rome, IV, 79.

10 καì πεσσἀ πεντέγραμμα καì κύβων βoλαí: I have adopted Lamer's suggestion for the obscure phrase πεσσὰ πεντέγραμμα

11 His actual words are obscure enough—παρετείνετo δì αὐτῶν καì μέση γραμμή.

12 See J. E. Smith, Lachesis Lapponica, II, 55-8, a reference which I owe to Mr Murray.

13 The Game of Πόλις (Glasgow, 1911), kindly sent me by the author.