Killed the Parthians and won the Brittons: let’s play Romans!That’s what the text on this game board from Rome says, celebrating victories obtained probably during the IV century, in order to define the tiles of a board game. This game called “Duodecem Scriptorum” was played in two, with three dice. Each player needed to move his tesserae (men) to the end of the path starting from the central line, moving all the way along, then turning up and finally to the last line, in a sort of ploughing or stitching way, as a tabula from Ostia with consecutive letters seams to prove.
CCCCCC | BBBBBB
AAAAAA | AAAAAA
DDDDDD | EEEEEE
Each die would move one men and no man could be taken until all were at least on to the first line. Many literary passages speak about these kind of games which romans loved as much as they loved gambling.
There are numerous different types of tabulae and this with 36 spaces was often marked with complete sentences of 6 words of 6 letters.
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