In the ages around the dawn of our era the Roman Empire developed, blooming into a world power. In the 2nd c. BC it subjected a realm which had been powerful once –remind Alexander the Great’s campaigns-: Greece. Then happened what happened any place and any time: the higher culture, in this case the Greek one, won the lower culture; the upper class of the Roman society soon turned Greek.

 In these years the Roman Scaevola, a more than reputable member of the Roman upper class, played a board game which probably was draughts. It means that the Romans did not borrow this game from the Greek in the 2nd c. BC, the Romans already played it. This raises a question: did the ancient Greek play draughts?

 This question cannot be simply passed over as utter nonsense, for the Greek played a game on the alquerque board, in the Middle Ages the board for draughts. A popular theme in the Greek art are two game playing heroes [Buchholz in Laser 1987:126-184]. A very famous example is a vase from about 550 BC with the Mycenaeans Ajax and Achilles, see below.

Ajax and Achilles playing a board game

 An older example is the illustration below, a Hellenic relief from Eretria on Euboea, a Greek island off the coast of Attica, dated from before the 5th c. BC. The characteristic pattern of the lined draughts board is plainly visible.

Draughts (?) playing Greek heroes, before 5th c. BC

 The alquerque board has five horizontal and vertical lines, see the diagram below.

 The game on this board was called Penta grammai, literally “five lines”. Five lines was played with 2x12 pieces:

(1) Each of the players has five men on five lines, so that Sophocles naturally says “five-lined boards and the throw of the dice”; and of the five lines on either side there was a middle one called “the sacred line”, and a player who moved a piece from it gave rise to a proverb: “He moves the piece from the sacred line”

[Julius Pollux “Onomasticon” IX 97]

Sophocles divided board games into two groups: games with dice on the one hand, and Penta grammai, a game without dice (together with other games without dice, I assume) on the other.

 In Suetonius’ work we find information on the holy line:

(2) 13. For in the centre between the pieces a line was drawn called the sacred, because the looser runs to this line in case of dire need.

14. Hence the proverb: “I shall chase him away from the sacred line”, which means something like ‘there are some in a hopeless situation and they urgently need help’. Also Sophron used this proverb when he wrote: “I shall soon chase him from the sacred line, where he must leave his piece or pebble”. Therefore Alcaeus said: “He gains the upper hand after having hit the strong piece from the sacred line.” Theocritus in this passage: “And [he] removes the piece from the sacred line”, which means ‘he makes his last move’ [or] ‘he is in great danger after having sent the last piece along the holy line’, or actually ‘after having avoided the sacred line’.

15. Diodorus of Megara compares such a piece with the dance of the stars, but Clearchus thinks that it can be compared with the five planets.

[Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus “De ludis Graecis”]

The Latin game name Duodecim scruporum points to a game with uniform pieces. We don’t know, whether in the Roman game too a piece on the middle line was protected in some way. 16th c. Italian draughts was played with the rule that in some specific situations a piece could only be taken when attacked by two enemy pieces. This rule was described by Ullisse Aldrovandi in “De ludis tum publicis tum privatis methodus” [Pratesi 1993]. Could this rule be a relic of classical draughts?

 The Greek Five lines game and the Roman Twelve pieces game were played in the same time, and over and above at a relatively short distance. The Greek poet Theocritus (Theokritos), 3rd c. BC, was borne in Syracuse, later he migrated to the island of Kos. Again a reason to ask if Theocritus’ Five lines game and Scaevola’s Twelve pieces game were identical.

A question

 A question on this Theocritus. In his 1918 manuscript Murray quoted a line from the sixth “Idyll”:

(3) She plays out all her game and leaves her king unguarded.

What is its context?