Latrunculi

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Modern reconstruction of the game in the Quintana Museum, Künzing

Latrunculi ( Latin for "soldiers", "mercenaries"), also Ludus latrunculorum or simply Latrones , was the name of a Roman board game for two people and was played without dice . Both sides received the same number of pieces, which were different in color. The game pieces all had the same value. Latrunculi was the most widespread and popular game of the Romans and was particularly valued by the legionnaires as a pastime. The Latin diminutive latrunculus from latro originally meant " mercenary ", " soldier " and only later acquired the pejorative meaning "bandit".

Latrunculi itself is not an invention of the Romans, but came from the Greeks , who called this game Polis (ancient Greek for "city").

At the time of the Empire , games of chance were banned in Rome . But since the only thing that mattered with Latrunculi was intellect and skill, it could also be played in public places. Even today there are numerous latrunculi playing fields carved into the stone slabs of squares or stairs.

Rules of the game

The stones are arranged in two closed rows on the opposite sides of the playing field.

Both players take turns moving a stone either horizontally or vertically, but not diagonally and not backwards. The aim of the game is to capture as many stones from the opponent as possible until the opponent is either without options or has no stones left. To hit a stone, it must be framed by two of your own ( be it vertically, horizontally or diagonally ).

There were no set rules for latrunculi, so today it is no longer possible to understand exactly how the game was played. Since there was no set of rules, it was played on fields of different sizes with 8 by 7, 8 by 8 or 9 by 10 fields.

For a long time, the rules seemed to be completely lost, until they were largely reconstructed through careful study of the sources by the historian Ulrich Schädler , the director of the Swiss game museum in La Tour-de-Peilz and co-editor of the specialist journal Board Game Studies .

Related games

According to Schädler, there could be a connection to the Egyptian game Seega , as well as Ceega and Egyptian Siga. The games will be combined into the games group or Latrunculi Petteia, including the chess variant Shōgi .

literature

  • Katharina Uebel & Peter Buri: Roman Games , p. 39
  • Ulrich Schädler: Latrunculi - a lost strategic board game of the Romans. In: Homo Ludens. Der spielende Mensch IV , 1994, pp. 47-67.
  • Ulrich Schädler: War of the stones. In: Spielbox 2 , 1995, pp. 44-46.
  • Ulrich Schädler: Latrunculi - a forgotten Roman game of strategy reconstructed. In: Abstract Games 7 , 2001, pp. 10-11.
  • Ulrich Schädler: Research Notes . May 2004.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Newsgroup entry on PBM.com ( Memento of the original dated December 2, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.pbm.com
  2. ↑ Egyptian Siga ~ mother of all board games
  3. ↑ BoardGameGeek: Seega

Web links

See also