tabula lusoria

TA´BULA LUSO´RIA(πίναξ), a board for playing games, called also ALVEUS from having a raised rim. Ancient backgammon and draughts, and the boards on which they were played, are treated under DUODECIM SCRIPTAand LATRUNCULIrespectively. Other games, played with and without dice, are described, though less intelligibly, by the grammarians (Pollux, 9.97, 98; Eustath. ad Od. p. 1397). Bruzza, writing in 1877, states that upwards of 100 tabulae lusoriae, serving for six different games, had been found in Rome and the environs, mostly in the Castra Praetoria and the Catacombs (Bullett. comunale, 1877, pp. 81-99); from an examination of subsequent lists it does not appear that any further discoveries of a like sort have been made down to the present time. More than 60 of these are of the type given below, in which 36 letters are arranged in three double rows of six each: others, instead of the letters, have 36 arbitrary signs which served the same purpose; and one in particular repeats 36 times the words palma feliciter expressed in a monogram. We have selected a few of the more suggestive examples; in order to make each row consist of six letters, it will be seen that some liberties are taken with the spelling. 1.VIOTVS 0LEBATE  LVDERE 0NESCIS  DALUSO 0RILOCU[M] 2.SEMPER 0IN HANC  TABVLA 0HILARE  LVDAMV 0SAMICI. 3VICTOR  VINCAS  NABICE  FEELIX  SALBUS  REDIAS. 4INVIDA  PVNCTA  IVBENT  FELICE  LVDERE  DOCTVM. 5ABEMUS  INCENA  PVLLVM  PISCEM  PERNAM  PAONEM, BENATORES.

Nos. 1 and 2 are divided in the middle by a representation of the calculi with which the game was played; No. 3 by the figure of a sailing ship. Nos. 2 and 4 are metrical, after a fashion. The forms LEBATE (leva te, take yourself off), NABICE (naviga), SALBUS and BENATORES show the confusion of b and v, as in Spanish and modern Greek; PAONEM illustrates the French paon. In No. 1 the M of LOCVM seems to have been inserted by mistake, as the six letters are complete without it. The word BENATORES is of course not included in the letters that mark the board; it may imply that the game afforded a mild excitement to tired sportsmen after their day's work. Nos. 1 and 3 were found in a Christian tomb, and have been quoted to prove that the discipline of the early Church as regards games of chance was not very strict. Compare Dict. of Chr. Ant., s. v. Dice.

It is conjectured that this was a game in which each player tried, under certain unspecified conditions, to get three men into a ros (Ov. A. Am. 3.365, Trist. 2.481; cf. Isid. Orig. 18.64). A tabula lusoria described by Martial (Mart. 14.17) had backgammon and draught boards on opposite sides. (Marquardt, Privatl. 836-838.)

(πίναξ). A board for playing games. See duodecim scripta; latrunculi.