Ludus latrunculorum
Ludus latrunculorum, latrunculi, or simply latrones ("the game of brigands", from latrunculus, diminutive of latro, mercenary or highwayman) was a two-player strategy board game played throughout the Roman Empire.
Description
It is said to resemble chess or draughts, but is generally accepted to be a game of military tactics.
Because of the paucity of sources, reconstruction of the game's rules and basic structure is difficult, and therefore there are multiple interpretations of the available evidence
History
Sources
The game of latrunculi is believed to be a variant of earlier Greek games known variously as Petteia, pessoí, psêphoi, poleis and pente grammaí, to which references are found as early as Homer's time.
In Plato's Republic, Socrates' opponents are compared to “bad Petteia players, who are finally cornered and made unable to move.”
In the Phaedrus, Plato writes that these games come from Egypt, and a draughts like game called Seega is known to have been played in ancient Egypt.
In his Onomasticon, the Greek writer Julius Pollux describes Poleis as follows:
The game played with many pieces is a board with spaces disposed among lines: the board is called the “city” and each piece is called a “dog;” the pieces are of two colors, and the art of the game consists in taking a piece of one color by enclosing it between two of the other color.
Among the Romans, the first mention of latrunculi is found in the Roman author Varro (116–27 BC), in the tenth book of his De Lingua Latina (“On the Latin Language”), where he mentions the game in passing, comparing the grid on which it is played to the grid used for presenting declensions.
An account of a game of latrunculi is given in the 1st-century AD Laus Pisonis:
When you are weary with the weight of your studies, if perhaps you are pleased not to be inactive but to start games of skill, in a more clever way you vary the moves of your counters on the open board, and wars are fought out by a soldiery of glass, so that at one time a white counter traps blacks, and at another a black traps whites. Yet what counter has not fled from you? What counter gave way when you were its leader? What counter [of yours] though doomed to die has not destroyed its foe? Your battle line joins combat in a thousand ways: that counter, flying from a pursuer, itself makes a capture; another, which stood at a vantage point, comes from a position far retired; this one dares to trust itself to the struggle, and deceives an enemy advancing on its prey; that one risks dangerous traps, and, apparently entrapped itself, counter traps two opponents; this one is advanced to greater things, so that when the formation is broken, it may quickly burst into the columns, and so that, when the rampart is overthrown, it may devastate the closed walls. Meanwhile, however keenly the battle rages with cut-up soldiers, you conquer with a formation that is full, or bereft of only a few soldiers, and each of your hands rattles with its band of captives.
Allusions to the game are found in the works of such writers as Martial and Ovid and they provide ideal evidence as to the method of capture used in the game with passages such as: unus cum gemino calculus hoste perit, Ov. Ars amatoria 3.358 ("when one counter perishes by a twin foe"); cum medius gemino calculus hoste perit, Ov. Tristia 2.478 ("when a counter perishes in the midst by a twin foe"); and calculus hae (sc. tabula) gemino discolor hoste perit, Mart. 14.17.2 ("a counter of differing color perishes on this [board] with a twin enemy").
Ovid also writes about the efforts to rescue an isolated piece away from the others: "how the different colored soldier marches forth in a straight line; when a piece caught between two adversaries is imperiled, how one advancing may be skilful to attack and rescue a piece moved forward, and retreating may move safely, not uncovered" (Tristia II 477-480).
According to Ulrich Schädler, this indicates that the pieces in the game only moved one space per turn, instead of using the Rook's move, otherwise an isolated piece's escape would have been relatively easy.
Schädler also deduces from this that pieces were able to jump over other pieces into an empty square beyond, otherwise a rescuing piece could end up blocking the other piece needing rescue.
The last mention of latrunculi that survives from the Roman period is in the Saturnalia of Macrobius.
See also
External links
- Ludus latrunculorum @ Wikipedia
