832 REPOKT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1896. 



bly belonged to this or a later period. I am told by Dr. Morris Jastrow 

 that 110 word for dice has yet been discovered in the cuneiform. 



18. Tesserae.' Dice, Ancient Roman or Etruscan. Purchased in 

 Florence, Italy. 



Cubes of bone,- about an inch square, rej^ularly marked, the pips 

 consisting of concentric circles. As is frequently the case with Roman 

 dice, these dice are made of a hollow bone, the openings on two opposite 

 sides being stopped with bone i)lugs. Several of the Roman dice in the 

 University Museum are stained a greenish color with salts of copper. 



Three tesserae or cubical dice were anciently employed, while four 

 tali or knuckle bones were used. It is recorded, however, that as early 

 as the time of Eustathiusthe modern practice of using two dice instead 

 of three had been established. ' 



In order to prevent cheating, dice were cast into conical beakers 

 {pyrf/ns, tiirricnla), the interior of which was formed of ditierent steps. 

 A parallel to this is found in the Siamese backgammon, AS^aAa, where the 

 dice are thrown into the krahok.^ 



The classical games with dice, of whi(;h accounts have come down to 

 us, were chiefly iilayed in connection with a board or table {abacus, 

 tabula, alveus, ali'eolus), on which pieces or men were moved according 

 to the throws. These pieces were round or oval stones {calculi), or 

 later, draftsmen {latr unculi), }nst, as with us, the same men are used 

 for draughts and backgammon. 



Professor Lanciani'^ states that the one hundred and more gaming- 

 tables {tabulae lusoria) found in Rome, mostly during his lifetime, belong 

 to six dift'ereut games of hazard. In some of them, the mere chance of 

 dice-throwing was coupled with a certain amount of skill in moving 

 the ''men" or tesserae. Their outline is always the same. There are 

 horizontal lines at equal distance, each line containing twelve signs, 

 thirty-six in all. The signs vary in almost every table; there are 

 circles, squares, vertical bars, leaves, letters, monograms, crosses, cres- 

 cents, and immodest symbols; the majority of these tables (sixty- live) 



'Casts No. 168983/>, U.S.N. M., from originals Cat. No. 15781, Mas. Arch., Univ. 

 Peuu. Chinese Games with Dice and Dominoes, fig. 29, Report U. S. Nat. Mus., 

 1893, p. 535. 



'^ A great variety of materials have been used for dice. Among seventy dice, exhi- 

 bited in a case in the Greeli and Roman section of the IJritish Mnsenm, tlie mate- 

 rials are divided as follows: 



Bonn or ivory .. . 32 Jet 2 Greenstone 1 Marble 1 



Bronze H Meteoric iron. . . I Gray stone 1 Amber 1 



Agate 5 Pyrites 1 Blacli stone 1 Baked clay 1 



Kock crystal ... i Copper 1 Quartz 1 Porcelain 1 



Onyx 3 Lead 1 Alabaster 1 



A close-grained wood, espetially privet, is recorded as having been employed for 

 dice. (Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Art. Tessera.) 



^ Idem. 



"•Chinese Games with Dice and Dominoes, fig. 9, Report U. S. Nat. Mus., 1893, p. 501. 



•■'Rndolfo Lauciaiii, (iambling and Cheating in Ancient Rome, The North Ameri- 

 can Review, .)nly, 1892. 



