SHAKING THE DICE

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 November 1928, Page 8

SHAKING THE DICE

AN OLD-TIME GAME. t Tho dice box, not so popular as it was a generation ago still has a fascination for many who woo the goddess of chance. The game is played to-day much as Greek soldiers played before the walls of Troy, Roman eifr perors played in their palaces, and knights and ladies in the castles of the Middle Ages. . The true age of dice has never been ascertained. According to Sophocles, it was Palamedes, a Greek, who invented them. Herodotus, on the other hand, says that the Lydians invented them during - a famine in the days of King Atys. Excavations from ancient tombs, however, seem to point to the fact that they were Asiatic in origin.

Whenever and wherever dicing began, it seems certain that the game was held in high esteem in very ancient times and was little different 'from the play of to-day; only the ancients usually used three dice while the moderns use two. The ivory and bone dice dug up in such places as Thebes are similar to those manufactured to-day. When Greeks of the upper class gathered, gambling with dice usually figured in the entertainment. The throws' bore the name of heroes and divinities instead of such terms as “snake’s eyes’’ and “Little Joe.” Aphrodite was the highest, and the lowest was called dog. The Romans, being passionate gamblers, perhaps made more of dice than any other people, .though legally the pastime was forbidden except during the Saturnalia. Marc Antony is said to have been fond of dice; Augustus and Nero loved dicing; Claudius wrote a book on the game; and Commodus set apart rooms for playing in his palace. There is evidence in literature, frescoes and Sculpture, of its popularity in all walks of life, and among wealthy Romans fortunes wore sometimes staked on one throw. Whether the Romans took dice to the barbarians or whether they were dicing when the Romans came, tho Germans in particular were so given to the game, according to Tacitus, that when all else was lost they threw for their’personal liberty. Dicing is said to have been introduced into France in the reign of Philip Augustus and long was popular among the nobility, though royal interdicts were issued to stop it. In England dicing was much in yogue in the fourteenth century. Stow writes of a royal tournament at dice in the reign of Edward 111.

During the Middle Ages dicing schools and guilds of dicers sprang up ■in Europe, and' after the downfall of feudalism the famous German mercenaries were notorious for the practice. Dice games have always been popular in the Orient and still are; but in the Western world the place of importance they assumed has brought about strenuous efforts from time to time to suppress the use of dice.