The Project

Three research priorities

The project is based on a pluridisciplinary and comparative approach of ancient sources (written, archaeological, iconographic). The research explores three aspects: 1) education and lost rules, 2) identity, sociability and ideology, 3) childhood and gender.

1. Written sources

First focus: Reconstructing a lost heritage: There is no consensus as of yet on how to translate the vocabulary relating to play and gaming equipment. The aim here is to make a Greek and Latin lexicon of play and games in literary, epigraphic, and papyrological sources, associated with new translations of collected texts that will form an Anthology. This will provide far-reaching outcome, clearing a number of misconceptions (such as astragaloi commonly translated as ‘dice’).

Second focus: Pollux and children’s games: The Onomasticon written by the lexicographer Pollux of Naucratis (2^nd cent. CE), contains the description of many children’s games. It is regularly cited, using the edition by Bethe 1931, but it has never been studied in depth. A new scientific edition, with translation and commentary represents a long-awaited milestone. This task involves reflecting on the reception of ancient games. This research will be facilitated by collaborations with anthropologists working on oral and children memories, as well as with specialists in sciences of education and cognitive psychology.

Third focus: Play, games, and education situates Pollux in a wider cultural context.A research will be conducted on Greek and Roman cognitive, psychological, emotional aspects of games that are more diverse and nuanced than usually claimed. In the Satyricon 4.1, Asciltos’ complain that children play at school (nunc pueri in scholis ludunt!) is thus translated in 1913 as “As it is, the boy wastes his time in school” (Loeb).

2. Archaeological sources: Locus ludi

We concentrate on representative sites and find contexts, using GIS software to record the spatial distribution of game devices according to chronology, typology, context. The material is rare, partly because it is not yet identified or overlooked, or the identification is debated. On selected sites, games pieces (knucklebones, dice, counters…) and game boards will be catalogued and classified in order to create a reference typology, paying attention to mistaken identifications. The identity of the players and the function of the games will be analysed according to context, domestic, public, sacred, funerary, in the search also of multicultural interactions.

First focus: Roman towns, east and west.

The aim is to analyse games as mirrors of the social dynamics of urban culture in public and private spaces, among common folk and élite, comparing Asia Minor towns, Vesuvian cities, Ostia Antica, Rome, provincial towns, and Roman legionary camps. What did an Egyptian trader play in Pompeii or Ostia, or a Spanish legionary on the Roman limes? What did they play together and did it change over time? Some games were played uninterruptedly, by Christians too.

Second focus: Games in liminal places

Since the Greek Geometric period, game boards and pieces are also found in liminal contexts, like tombs. In sanctuaries, game boards, dice, and knucklebones embody the negotiating process characterizing Graeco-Roman religion. The task will focus on the symbolic, religious or identity function of games in funerary and religious contexts.

3. Iconographic sources

First focus: Children as social actors

The concept of ‘family games’ emerged in the eighteenth century with a new type of Bourgeois family, but the common statement that adults, especially fathers, rarely played with children in antiquity can be challenged, as does the notion of children as passive consumers. Work will be based on the corpus of Attic miniature vases, the so-called Anthestheria choes (c. 430-380 BCE) available in the Fribourg database Callisto, and in larger resources, such as the Beazley Archive at Oxford. The analysis of the visual discourse will provide new insights in children’s agency. It will investigate children at play with siblings, friends, children, and adults (child minders, free or not, parents or grandparents), according to age group, gender, and social status, and the types of play, free or adult-managed, compared with other media.

Second focus: Games and the fabric of gender

Ancient texts and iconography reveal that like music and musical instruments, games too were categorized as male or female. As today gendered games contributed to the fabric of women and men by make-believe play and ‘role-learning’. Pollux often specifies who plays the game, such as Pentelitha (five stones), reserved to unmarried girls. The criteria change over time. Psellos (11^th cent. CE) tells the story of a boy who only liked girls’ games and gives a gendered list including nuts and whipping tops for boys. The task will focus on the ludic interaction of women and men, comparing Greek and Roman iconography, realities and representations. On Attic and South Italian vases (5^th-4^th cent. BCE), unmarried young men and women thus interact by playing skill and chance games that deliver love oracles reflecting Greek social expectations.