Ave game! The entertainment and gamble of the ancient Romans
Have you ever wondered what were the entertainment of the ancient Romans? Has the idea that gambling could ever become passionate about people already more than two thousand years ago? The roots of this passion are really very ancient, more than the Romans themselves actually, but the empire has had the merit of "collecting" all the games around the world known by spreading them to the point of getting them (albeit modified) even until in our day.
The die is cast
More or less anyone of us, if only as a way of saying completely in one in our day, knows the formulation "The die is cast"Pronounced by Julius Caesar: a phrase that most in common language translate with" the nut is trait ", but which in truth has a much wider meaning that well introduces our article.
The phrase of Giulo Cesare does not refer only to the dice (which already say it long on how common it could be to use them), but more generally to everything that remains the prerogative of the case and on which in some way our fate depend, that is the gamble.
The symbolism of this sentence lies in the fact that the game was so part of the Roman culture that the war reference was made precisely by inconvenient the imponderability linked to gambling, which in Rome was a real normality to the point of having to come regulated. You got it right, the ludopathy already existed at the time and above all touched the high classes (which they had to play) collecting also illustrious examples: upon the death of her sister Drusilla it seems that Caligola reagi playing dice, while the emperor Claudio to the dice had dedicated an entire treaty, in addition to having equipped the Just imperial chariot of a special structure to be able to play even among the junctions of the march. Also Augusto was bitten by the game, to the point of offering 250 shields to every guest on the wedding day of his daughter Giulia to invest in the game.
Unlike today, the game (at least in its problematic form) was however precisely linked to the richest classes and this had imposed measures to prevent families of patricians from ending in ruins losing fortunes, a circumstance that would have caused a loss of the status quo with related repercussions on the stability of the whole Patrizia community.
What games did you play?
As we previously said, one of the greatest merits of ancient Rome was its "centralizing" many of the discoveries made in the conquest campaigns, which speaking of gambling had as a consequence the spread of many different games. What were the favorites from the ancient Romans? We tell you the main ones below.
Of course, the first games of which you have trace are also the simplest and, hear heard, are both games to date: the die, to be played using combinations of fingers, and "head or cross", or rather The head or a ship, a name that is due to the graphics of the first Roman bronze coins never widespread which represented a divinity on the front and a ship on the reverse of the coin (let's talk about the 4th century A.C).
Then there were precisely the dice, or Buttons, made of bone, ivory or glass, and by far the most widespread among the gamblers of time: the variants of dice found in archaeological excavations, all six faces but of the most diverse shapes and sizes are not counted. The truth is that the nuts arrived "already famous" in Rome probably from Greece, a theory completely supported by the presence of this game already in the Iliad.
Perhaps even more ancient and almost equally famous were then the Such, the Roman name of the astragali: small bones that in antiquity were used for divinations, but which then became a game similar to the dice but with only four faces available (hers were unusable by form) that were launched to obtain the most number tall.
To conclude there are two other games: the Latrunculi, real progenitor of chess based on strategy and accounting, and the Twelve, which instead is somehow the ancestor of the backgammon.
Our conclusions
As we could see not only in ancient Rome, gambling was a reality, but it was also a reality so widespread that it was in fact part of the popular culture of the moment, as well as "conquest" from a past world of which the Roman Empire had been able to preserve and spread everything that destined to remain over time.
A truly fascinating path that leaves us with another question again: which will be of the digital game, online casinos and the BLACKJACK In two thousand years? Will we also become part of this evolution of games born thousands of years ago or with the digital era will everything be revolutionized?
