Games Romans Played

Romans appreciated the public games sponsored by senators and emperors, most notably the chariot races in the Circus Maximus and the gladiatorial combat in the Colosseum. Other athletic activities were enjoyed by the youth of Rome, such as wrestling, boxing, swimming, racing, and various ball sports.

Fresco from Pompeii

Away from the arena, the Roman people enjoyed simple dice and board games as well.  Playing games was most likely a pleasant escape from daily labors. On a hot sunny day under a merchant’s awning or in an icy-cold barracks, a game of marbles or dice must have added to life, and especially if there was money to be won. Some of the more common board games played by ancient Romans were dice, knucklebones, marbles, and a form of checkers, chess, tic-tac-toe, and backgammon.

Children and adults loved to play a game that was called Knucklebones.  Five or ten small bones, usually sheep or goat bones, but they were also made from glass, metal, or wood, would be thrown down. Depending on how the bones landed on the ground, points were awarded.

 Dice (Tesserae) was a gambling game.  Players rolled the dice and bet on the results.  Like today, dice were shaken in a cup and tossed onto a table. People also placed bets. Paintings found on ancient Roman walls show that they played with three dice. 

 Terni lapilli was a game drawn in the shape of boxes, crossed lines and especially in a wheel shaped diagram on the stones of amphitheaters, on floors of public monuments and on the steps of many theatres. This game was the ancestor of the modern Tic-Tac-Toe, but had different rules that made the game very interesting compared with the current version.

Terni lapilli etched onto a stone surface, and a modern equivalent

 

They also played a game called Ludus Latrunculorum (“robbers or soldiers”), a Roman form of chess. It used a board made either of wood, marble, stone, or silver, and black and white army pieces that fight it out. 

This game was a game of capture like modern checkers and chess with different types of pieces that were moved around a board made up of squares. A Roman game of strategy and direct battle, it was simple but also very exciting. At Vindolanda in Roman Britain, gaming boards have been found both inside and outside the walls of the fort, and in a range of different social contexts. For example, inside the fort some boards were found near the home of the commanding officer and in the barracks, while outside the fort, other boards were recovered near the baths, showing that it was popular among all residents.

 

A board for latruncoli discovered at Vindolanda in Roman Britain

A family of related games known as Duodecim Scripta or Ala, are probably the ancestors of modern backgammon. Merels (the ‘mill game’) is essentially the same as modern Nine Men’s Morris. Other games, especially those played with dice are mysterious to us because we have no records of their rules.

 

Ancient and modern versions of Nine Men's Morris

Nevertheless, we know that both games of chance with dice or knucklebones and board games were commonplace both in Roman Britain and in the wider Roman World. Archaeologists and historians investigate ancient games through a range of sources. Some ancient authors - such as the poets Ovid or Martial – drop hints about the rules of ancient games, while others, like Suetonius, tell us that people as important as the Emperor Claudius played board games. We can compare this with material evidence such as gaming boards, gaming pieces and dice to try to understand how the Roman people played games in the past.