Jactus and other dice games

[Andy]

what are the rules for jactus? If anybody can help that would be great. I did find a site that tried to explain it. How many dice are used to play?

What are some other simple games?

[M. Demetrius]

Catch the pilum? Simple rules, but you definitely want to go first.



Latrunculus was immensely popular. I've looked at the rules, and they're a little vague to me, but it also seems to me there's a lot more to it than meets the eye, in the same way that Go is a simple game that takes more than one lifetime to master.

Pente, played on intersecting line grid, strives to get 5 in a row something like tic tac toe. That's pretty easy to learn, and anybody can get proficient fairly fast.

[Medusa Gladiatrix]

Latrunculus is a board game similar to checkers, hence played without dices. The most common board was 12 x 8 fields. Line up the stones (in this case 12) and put a king in front of it. The aim is to catch the king i.e. when he is surrounded by four enemy stones. Stones can be moved any number of fields horizontal or vertical, but not diagonal. An enemy stone is catched if surrounded on two sides.

Tabula or Ludus Duodecim Scripta are the predecessors of today's Backgammon and the Turkish name Tavla still resembles the name Tabula. The older version was played with 36 fields (12 in a row hence 3 rows), later it was reduced to the more familiar 24 field board. You play both versions with 15 pieces and three dices in contrary to the two dices which you use today.

Tali was played originally with astragales (knuckelbones of sheep or goats rarely cows) and was later developed to playing with dices, I have rules where it's played with four dices/astragales. Depending on the numbers you threw you won or lost. The lowest throw was the dog showing all 1. Venus showed the highest four numbers in a row. With the astragales it was all four different sides because there were only four sides in contrary to dices with six sides.

Children played a game of skill in throwing up five astragales and trying to catch them with the back of the hand and to pick up those which they didn't catch without those on the back of the hand falling down.

[Medusa Gladiatrix]

Literature on Ancient Board Games is not easy to find. Here is the list of the books I know of:

K. V. Decker, Römisches Spielbrett und Spielgerät im Mittelrheinischen Landesmuseum Mainz, Bonner Hefte zur Vorgeschichte 3, 1972, 19ff.

J. Väterlein, Roma ludens. Kinder und Erwachsene beim Spiel im Alten Rom, Amsterdam 1976.

P. Steiner, Römisches Brettspiel und Spielgerät aus Trier, Saalburg Jahrbuch 9, 1939.

R. G. Austin, Roman Board Games, greece and Rome IV, 1939/35.

H. J. R. Murray, A history of board games other than chess, Oxford 1952 (New York 1978).

R. C. Bell, board and tables games from many civilisations, London 1960.

Irving Finkel (ed.), Ancient Board Games in Perspective
Papers from the first international colloquium on the board games of antiquity, supplemented by additional papers.352p, 150 b/w illus (British Museum Press 2006)

Marco Fittà, Spiele und Spielzeug in der Antike, Stuttgart 1998.
(This is the German translation of a book written in Italian. I don't know if there is an English translation available)

[Andy]

That is great help. Sounds like Tali is alot like Jactus.

[Medusa Gladiatrix]

I haven't heard about a game called Iactus, when checking my Latin dictionary I found out that iactus means the throw of dice itself.

[M. Demetrius]

Alea iacta est. (The die is thrown). Yep. I think Caesar used that phrase as if to say, "The game has begun".

[Dan Howard]

I think it has a little more meaning than that. I think Ceasar was stating that there is "no turning back now". Once you throw the dice you can't take them back. You have to wait to see how they land. The phrase "crossing the Rubicon" has similar connotations.

[M. Demetrius]

Agreed, Dan. Once it's begun, you can't "un-begin" it. And the outcome was anything but certain as Caesar and the 13th crossed the bridge. It wasn't like nobody knew they were coming.
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Back on topic, there was a game something like tic tac toe, but I don't know what its name was. And there were versions of "Mancala" or "Owari", (same game), played with pits and pebbles, sometimes with wood or stone carvings and other sorts of markers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mancala

[Dan Diffendale]

This page refers to a game called "Jactus," but the passage of Suetonius referred to doesn't actually mention such a name.

There's modern game based on Roman dice games called "Jactus," produced by Past Times.