A note on dice: originally, knucklebones were used in place of dice. Julius Caesar's famous line "alea jacta est" is usually given as 'the dice are cast', but it actually translates to 'the (knuckle)bones are cast'. They have four distinct sides that can be landed on; this is why many very early dicing and board games assume 4 sided dice. The numbers assigned to them (1, 3, 4 and 6, usually) reflected that knucklebones are weighted and do not fall equally. Eventually, artificial "knucklebones" were made, usually from precious materials as status symbols, that were long, rectangular cubes. Eventually these were made square, so as to give the two extra sides, in the form of dice we are familiar with today.
Alfonse X's Book of Games gives instructions on how to make dice, and several Elizabethan 'coney-catching' pamphlets refer to how dice are loaded to cheat in gambling.
Alfonse X's Book of Games gives instructions on how to make dice, and several Elizabethan 'coney-catching' pamphlets refer to how dice are loaded to cheat in gambling.
Tali
This is a Roman gambling game, properly played with four knucklebones ('tali' is the Latin name for them). If you don't have a set of bones, you can use four dice, but every die that lands on a 2 or a 5 must be thrown again until it shows a 1, 3, 4 or 6. Sources: I originally took the rules from the Roman Games website (no longer exists, but available via the Wayback machine). |
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Hazard
This dicing game was originally an Arabic gambling game, done with two dice, and was brought back to Europe by the Crusaders. It possibly dates back as far as the 11th century. Dagonell the Juggler has a good write up of the game's history. Sources: my original source for the rules was the Encyclopedia Britannica. Hazard is mentioned several times in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales which where I discovered the game was period. |
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