Kubeia and its congeners are often translated as ‘playing dice’ or ‘dicing’ because kuboi are ‘dice’. But sometimes kubeia has nothing to do with ‘dice’ (kuboi) at all, and so ought often to be translated simply as ‘gambling’. Pollux explains the nature of the word clearly in book 7, and his position is supported by earlier authors such as Theopompus, Diphilus, Isocrates, Xenophon and Aeschines. Not only is it possible to ‘gamble’ (kubeuein) with knucklebones (astragaloi) as well as cubic dice (kuboi), it is also possible to ‘gamble’ (kubeuein) by folding leather straps, by spinning coins and by guessing about small objects hidden in the hand; it is even possible to ‘gamble’ (kubeuein) during a cock-fight. The mistaken belief that the word means ‘dicing’ has affected not only centuries of translations and interpretations, but also the editing of texts since at least the early 19th century, as is shown regarding a crux in Aeschines’ Against Timarchus.

Greeks, unlike Romans, gambled with five not four knucklebones (astragaloi) in their dice games. As Pollux explains, the high number of an individual knucklebone was sometimes eight rather than six, and so when a dicer rolled ‘all eights’ they attained a sum of 40. This roll was called the ‘Euripides’. The confusion about this throw is due to a report found in Byzantine sources and attributed to Suetonius, where it is claimed that dicers of Greek antiquity used four knucklebones. Suetonius may have confused the Roman custom with the Greek one, but there are good grounds for questioning whether the report is from ‘Suetonius’ at all. Elsewhere ‘Suetonius’ reports that Greeks played with three rather than two cubic dice, but such a report cannot have been made before the seventh century AD.