And when he tried again, the waggish bone
Insensibly was through his fingers gone;
Still he was throwing, yet he ne’er had thrown.”
Cicero is authority for the statement that Cato, the censor, was an inveterate gambler. If so, how inappropriate the appellation which has brought to his memory an ill-deserved fame? With what consistency could a man addicted to gambling censure the conduct of his fellow man? Domitian was blamed for gaming from morning till night and without cessation even on the festival days of the Roman calendar. But this is scarcely notable in a man who was brutal in every instinct, base in every passion. In his satires Juvenal exhibits children playing dice in imitation of their fathers, and in his third satire they are represented cheating in their games. The fighting quails of the Romans are mentioned by Plutarch, and to him we are also indebted for the lament of Marc Antony, that even the very quails of Octavius Caesar were superior to his own. Was this a foreboding of the fate of Cleopatra’s lover at the battle of Actium[Actium]? Returning to Juvenal we find this graphic picture: “When was the madness of games of chance more furious? Nowadays, not content with carrying his purse to the gaming table, the gamester conveys his iron chest to the play room. It is there that, as soon as the gaming instruments are distributed, you witness the most terrible contests. Is it not mere madness to lose one hundred thousand sestercii, and refuse a garment to a slave perishing with cold?” This inexorable and terrible satirist was the contemporary of eleven Roman Emperors, including Domitian.
Gibbon, quoting from Ammianus Marcellinus, thus describes the situation at Rome at the end of the fourth century: “Another method of introduction into the houses and society of the ‘great’ is derived from the profession of gaming, or, as it is more politely styled, of play. The confederates are united by a strict and indissoluble bond of friendship, or rather of conspiracy. A superior degree of skill in the “tessarian” art is a sure road to wealth and reputation. A master of that sublime science who, in a supper or assembly, is placed below a magistrate, displays in his countenance the surprise and indignation which Cato might be supposed to feel when he was refused the prætorship by the votes of a capricious ‘people.’”
All authorities who mention the subject agree that gambling made fearful havoc in society and government under the Emperors, and the conclusion is irresistible, that the “decline and fall” was due in a large measure to the prevalence of this infatuating and demoralizing vice. It is asserted, on good authority, that at the epoch when Constantine abandoned Rome, never to return, every inhabitant of that city, down to the populace, were addicted to gambling.
The Greeks are to-day famous for the number of sharpers that ply their trade, both with dice and cards, but especially with cards. To cheat in this way the Greek relies on shifting the cut, which is done in many ways:
1. As the Greek lays down the pack to be cut, he is ready to seize that part of the deck which his opponent leaves on the table, and lay it on the other so that the upper part projects over the lower and toward him. This offers a niche for the insertion of the little finger of the hand which raises the pack. It is possible for a player having his little finger thus in a pack, to twirl the two parts and restore them to their original or uncut position. All that can be seen is a whirring movement, and even this cannot be seen if the hand falls for an instant beneath the table.
2. To pass the cut, the sharper replaces the top part of the deck himself, but so quickly that it is impossible to see that he puts the top part almost half way back off the deck. With the right hand he raises the misshapen pack to the palm of his left hand. As the back of his left hand obscures the vision, he clutches the forward or lower half of the pack and brings it to the top, the appearance being that he is straightening the pack, in order to deal. He now has the cards as he stocked them in the first place. This trick is called the straddle and other names.
3. A wider card is introduced from another pack, and placed exactly over the stocked portion of the deck. As this card is about half-way down, and as it offers a salient edge for the fingers, the victim usually makes the cut precisely where the sharper designed it.