Roman Dice Cup- Anyone seen one?

[Matt Lukes]

Salve omnes,

I'm looking for an image of an original Roman dice cup- does anyone know of one, or even if there was a formal one and not just that any old drinking beaker was used?

Thanks :wink:

Matt

[LUCIUS ALFENUS AVITIANUS]

It's dificult to say. There are some little cilindrical boxes make of bone that could have been such dice cups, but how can we be sure of that?

Think that in roman period the things are very multifuncional, so probably the beakers were the most used stuff to play with dices.

[Matt Lukes]

Indeed I have little doubt that just about anything would have done, but I also wouldn't be surprised if makers did sell 'real' dice cups- I mean why not? Dice were made to a formal style to be sure- the ringed dots required a specialized drillbit to make afterall. I'm just hoping that somehwere a cup was found in association with dice such that its nature would be fairly certain :wink:

[caiusbeerquitius]

I´m not so sure if they used dice cups at all. In the near east, where people still play games with astragali and dice they throw the dice against a wall ususally, but don´t use cups. There are, however, roman dice-towers from brass, with a little stair inside, which fulfill the same function:

I can imagine that soldiers used pottery for games like "mäxle" where have to hide your dice roll from some players.

[Susanna]

http://www.personal.psu.edu/wxk116/roma/tesserae.html

seems like dice-cups.

[Martin Moser]

Hi Matt,

try this picture from the Museum of London Picture Library (Unfortunately they don't give proper references for the finds portrayed :-( ( )

By chance I stumbled upon it also a week or two ago in this book:

Ward, John. The Roman Era in Britain. Methuen & Co. Ltd., 36 Essex Street W. C., London, 1911. - online at LacusCurtius, you will find it in chapter 12:
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/
Gazetteer/Places/Europe/Great_Britain/_Periods/Roman/
_Texts/WARREB/12*.html

Text passage from there
=====
Various objects used in games are of constant occurrence. Dice (tesserae, tessellae), identical with the modern, have been found in sufficient number to prove that Roman Britain shared in the general passion for dice-playing. Fig. 62, F, is a bone example, but occasionally they are of ivory and lead. •Dice-boxes seem to be rare in this country, but E is an undoubted example of bone in p220the Guildhall. It is probable that small earthenware vases, like Fig. 50, Nos. 3 and 8, were used for the purpose.
=====

No measurements or dating though, I'm afraid. Maybe you should try and contact the Museum of London?

[Restitvtvs]

Thank you all for the great info & images. I've seen the same internet sources in the past, and I've seen many dice in several German & Italian museums.

More than 70% of these dice were between about 10 and 12 mm on each side, and they averaged about 11 mm on each side.

Using my many years of photogrammetric mensuration skills, and fancy tools, I still can not determine the size of the dice in the great image that Martin provided.

However, I compared dice and dice cup sizes on the same axis in that image, using an engineer's scale, and determined that the dice cup is slightly more that twice the size of the dice.

Therefore, I can say that if these particular dice averaged 11 mm on each side, that the dice cup would be about 24 or 25 mm from exterior top to exterior bottom (with well rounded top and bottom edges).

Hope this helps. Cheers!

[caiusbeerquitius]

http://www.personal.psu.edu/wxk116/roma/tesserae.html

seems like dice-cups.

Couldn´t be much clearer.

[Matt Lukes]

EXCELLENT- thanks so much guys- I actually half-expected to get no reply meaning that no one had any idea what the cup might have looked like, and here I get two excellent source images and one with dice that allow sizing! Wonderful I was able to simpy re-size the image and comparing one of my original dice to the one in the BM image on the left, which it most closely resembles, and I'm in agreement with William that the mouth of the cup appears to be on the order of 22-24mm. Once again I'm surprised at just how small ancient objects were compared to what I expect.

One thing that I find a little odd is that one source I found (the site Susanna mentioned actually :wink: ) suggested that the Romans normally played with three dice- the cup seems rather small for that...

[Arahne]

Try these folks for info on roman games
http://www.boardgamesstudies.org

[Gaivs Antonivs Satvrninvs]

This is great.I was just about to post asking about Roman dice and/or knucklebones(tali) because I recently saw a show about excavations at Vindolanda where they found "loaded" dice. The links are fantastic.Thanks.

Just as a thought,Matt,could dice cups have been made from leather as are the modern ones from Germany?I still have one that matches the dimensions above.Very simple design.

[Magnus]

A 2.5 cm cup? that doesn't sound like it would work very well.

What kinds of dice games did they play?

[Matt Lukes]

Yeah, it is pretty small, but then remember each die was only about 9-10mm on a side, and the cup was just for shaking them so no one could cheat (without loaded dice). A 25mm diameter cup should be sufficient, and the size makes sense to me for what a soldier might want in order that he could easily carry it around- small and light is good :wink:

[Magnus]

Did modern "craps" come from Roman dice games?