So shamelessly were the Athenians addicted to this vice, that they forgot all public spirit in their continued habits of gaming, and entered into convivial associations, or formed 'clubs,' for the purposes of dicing, at the very time when Philip of Macedon was making one grand 'throw' for their liberties at the Battle of Chaeronea.
This politic monarch well knew the power of depravity in enervating and enslaving the human mind; he therefore encouraged profusion, dissipation, and gambling, as being sure of meeting with little opposition from those who possessed such characters, in his projects of ambition—as Demosthenes declared in one of his orations.(21) Indeed, gambling had arrived at such a height in Greece, that Aristotle scruples not to rank gamblers 'with thieves and plunderers, who for the sake of gain do not scruple to despoil their best friends;'(22) and his pupil Alexander set a fine upon some of his courtiers because he did not perceive they made a sport or pastime of dice, but seemed to be employed as in a most serious business.(23)
(21) First Olynthia. See also Athenaeus, lib. vi. 260.
(22) Ethic. Ad Nicomachum, lib. iv.
(23) Plutarch, in Reg. et Imp. Apothegm
The Greeks gambled not only with dice, and at their equivalent for Cross and Pile, but also at cock-fighting, as will appear in the sequel.
From a remark made by the Athenian orator Callistratus, it is evident that desperate gambling was in vogue; he says that the games in which the losers go on doubling their stakes resemble ever-recurring wars, which terminate only with the extinction of the combatants.(24)
(24) Xenophon, Hist. Graec. lib. VI. c. iii.