Πεσσοισι προπαροιθε θυραων θυμον ἐτερπον,
Ἡμενοι ἐν ῥινοισι βοων οὑς ἐκτανον ἁυτοι. —Odyss. A. 107.
The word used by Homer, ρεσσοι,—which properly means the pebbles or pieces employed in the game,—is here translated tables; a term, which having now become nearly obsolete as signifying draughts, may be used to denote an ancient cognate game.
It might be plausibly urged by a commentator fond of discovering Homer's covert meanings, that the poet intended to censure the games of Astragalismus and Petteia,—the former as a cause of strife, and the latter as a fitting amusement for idle and dissipated persons, like the suitors of Penelope. In the twenty-third book of the Iliad, v. 87, Patroclus is represented as having killed, when a boy, though unintentionally, a companion with whom he had quarrelled when playing at Astragali or Tali:
... παιδα κατεκτανον Ἀμφιδαμαντος,
Νηπιος, οὐκ ἐθελων, ἀμφ' ἀστραγαλοισι χολωθεις.
It is not unlikely that an ancient piece of sculpture, in the British Museum,—representing a boy biting the arm of his companion, with whom he has quarrelled at Tali—relates to this passage.
[19] See a work by the late Mr. James Christie—more generally known to the world as an auctioneer than as a man of learning and of great research—entitled "An Enquiry into the ancient Greek game supposed to have been invented by Palamedes antecedent to the Siege of Troy; with Reasons for believing the Game to have been known from remote antiquity in China, and progressively improved into the Chinese, Indian, Persian, and European Chess." London, 1801.
[20] Julius Pollux, Onomasticon, lib. ix, cap. 7.
[21] "As the military groundwork of the game of cards, and its similarity to chess, cannot be denied; so a closer examination of this affinity may readily lead to the origin of the change in their figures and colours."—Breitkopf, Ueber den Ursprung der Spielkarten, s. 30.