We may deal at once with the other most important games, in which grown-up people took part in their hours of leisure. Many of these were also children’s games, in particular the game of ball, which we find even in Homeric times, and it was very popular throughout the whole of antiquity, especially in the hours of recreation after the bath or after physical exercises in the gymnasium, and it was especially recommended by physicians as healthy exercise. Some other games also bore a semi-gymnastic character, and will therefore be mentioned afterwards under the heading of gymnastics. Games of skill or chance, which were played with boards, figures, dice, etc., were very popular. We meet with these board games, which were already known to the Egyptians, even in the Homeric period. In later times, too, they were a favourite amusement, and we often find them represented on ancient monuments. Among the various modes of playing these, some bore a great resemblance to our modern games; the “game of towns” may be compared to our draughts; two opponents played at a board divided into squares with thirty stones apiece, which differed in colour, and the game was, by enclosing a hostile stone, either to capture it or to prevent it from moving. The terra-cotta group represented here in Fig. [102] probably shows a game of this kind. A youth and a woman are playing together, while a third person, a caricature, is looking on; the board is roughly divided into forty-two squares, and there are twelve flat stones, but we cannot from this draw any conclusion about the nature of the game.
In this game, as in chess or draughts, the victory depended entirely on the skill of the player, but an element of chance was added when the defence of the stones on their lines or squares depended on the
Fig. 102.
throwing of dice, which was the case in the game of “five-lines” (πεντέγραμμος). But even here there seem to have been modifications, which would enable a skilful player to compensate himself for an unfavourable throw, by the choice of various moves open to him. The games played with knuckle-bones and dice were pure games of chance, and were very often played for money. In playing dice they used several, generally three, dice, corresponding exactly to those of the present day, and a cup from which they threw them, and a board or a table with a raised edge on to which they were thrown. The victory depended on the number of points thrown. The best throw, three times six, was called the “Coan,” the worst, three times one, was called the “dog,” but there were various rules of the game dealing with particular combinations, such as is still the case in dice-playing at the present day.
There were several ways of playing with astragals, or knuckle-bones, which were really the ball of the ankle-joint of a lamb, or else were artificially imitated in other material. One way of playing, chiefly used by children, but also sometimes by grown-up people, was a real game of skill, and consisted in throwing up a number, usually five, of knuckle-bones, pebbles, beans, coins, etc., and catching them again on the back of the hand, meantime picking up with the stretched-out fingers those which had fallen down. Sometimes they only played “odd or even,” and one of the players had to guess straight away whether the other had an odd or even number of these astragals, which took the place of our counters, in his closed hand. Sometimes they played with astragals in the same way as with dice. In this case the four large sides of the bone, on which it might fall, had a particular numerical value, which was not written upon it, but depended on the shape of the bone, as each side differed from the others. The convex narrow side counted as one, the other, concave, narrow side as six, the broad convex side as three, and the broad concave side as four; two and five were wanting altogether, for the other little surfaces of the bone were not counted, since it could never fall upon them. Four pieces were generally used for playing, and they were treated just like dice; the best throw was that in which each of the astragals lay in a different position, and thus all values were represented, sometimes they counted according to the highest number thrown. In works of art we very often see girls playing astragal. One of the prettiest of these is the terra-cotta figure from Tanagra, represented in Fig. [103].
Fig. 103.