ANCIENT GREEK BOARD GAMES

AND HOW TO PLAY THEM

LESLIE KURKE

T HE PAULY-WISSOWA ARTICLE on ancient board games ("lusoria ta-

bula") is over a thousandcolumns long. It meticulously catalogues the
literary and archaeological evidence, details the shapes of boards and
pieces, and reconstructs the forms of play.1 As such, it is a monument to
nineteenth-century Wissenschaft-different in scale but not in kind from
most of the scholarly researchdone on ancient boardgames. My title (which
is tongue-in-cheek) gestures towards precisely this kind of antiquarianen-
deavor-the reconstructionof ancient Realia for their own sake. After all,
what could be more trivial than games, both for the ancients and for the
scholarly reconstruction?
This essay will not really be "GreekBoardGames and How to Play Them";
instead, I want to consider the conceptual world within which board games
might have been importantfor the Greeks. To situate this topic a little: It is
well known that the Greeks developed a powerful egalitarian ideology cen-
turies before they began to engage in explicit political theorizing or political
philosophy.2And ancienthistoriansspend a lot of time engaged in a chicken-
and-egg debate about whether constitutional reforms generated democracy
or, conversely, democratic ideology enabled the emergence of democratic
institutionalstructures.3For those who believe (as I do) that mentalite'had to
precede constitutional structure,the question becomes, where did egalitarian
ideology come from? How did it establish and reproduce itself? How ulti-
mately did the city interpellate citizens?4 I want to examine how various

Earlier versions of this paper were delivered as talks at the University of Southern California, The Cen-
ter for Hellenic Studies, and finally, as The George Walsh Memorial Lecture at the University of Chicago.
Many thanks to all three institutions for their generous invitations, hospitality, and stimulating intellectual
exchange. Thanks also to those who read and gave me detailed comments on earlier drafts of this work, es-
pecially Andrew Garrett,Mark Griffith,Richard Neer, and James Redfield. This article represents a revised
version of part of Chapter7 of: Leslie Kurke, Coins, Bodies, Games, and Gold: The Politics of Meaning in
Archaic Greece, forthcoming by Princeton University Press. ? 1999 by Princeton University Press. Re-
printed by permission of Princeton University Press.
1. Lamer 1927, cols. 1900-2029.
2. For the relatively late appearance of explicit political theory in Greece and the lack of any explicit
democratic theory in Athens, see Jones 1957, 41-72; Loraux 1986, 173-80, 202-20; Ober 1989, 38; Ober
1998.
3. On this debate, cf. Ober 1989, 22-23; Connor 1996.
4. This question is meant to invoke the French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser's notion that indi-
viduals are "hailed into" (or as he puts it, "interpellated by") ideology so that they can be "good subjects"

Classical Philology 94 (1999): 247-67

247

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248 LESLIE KURKE

materialpractices-like coinage, prostitution,and games-functioned liter-

ally and discursively to create and reproduceideology in what we might call
an "incorporated" state long before it was ever formulated explicitly in
theoretical terms. My interest is specifically focused on the archaic period,
in which I believe a whole set of material practices figured as symbolic
operatorswithin a significant contest of paradigmsand ideologies.
Games may seem an absurdly trivial domain for scholarly investigation,
but I would contend that it is precisely their lowly, unexamined status that
endows games with extraordinarypower to inculcate values within culture.
Thus P. Bourdieu has taught us to see the informing power of quotidian
bodily practices to shape the habitus, the enduring disposition, of social
actors in conformity with their social status, roles, and expectations.5 As
Bourdieu puts it, we must attend to all that "goes without saying because it
comes without saying," to all that is on the near side of language, the
"diffuse education which moves directly from practice to practice without
passing through discourse."6Games would seem to be a paradigmaticcase
for such sociological analysis, since continuously and from an early age,
children participatein these symbolic, rule-boundstructuresthat teach them
how to behave in "real life."
On the other hand, I must acknowledge a limitation on the investigation.
With games, though my concern is with practice, it is practice already at
one remove, refracted and mediated through literary and visual representa-
tions. We do not have the luxury of anthropologists, to observe games as
they are played "in the field," but only in the scanty and haphazardrefer-
ences that survive in the remainsof Greek culturalproduction.Thus, though
it is my contention that games do their cultural work as practice, prior to
verbalization and theory, we can catch them only on the other side of that
divide, fixed in texts and images like insects in amber.
Let me begin with a strange passage from Herodotus, from his ethno-
graphicdescriptionof the lonians' easternneighbors,the Lydians(1.94.1-7):
And the Lydians use customs very similar to the Greeks, apart from the fact that they
prostitute their female children. And first of men whom we know they minted and used
gold and silver coinage, and they were also the first retail traders (K67rrjkot).And the
Lydians themselves say that also the games which are now established for themselves
and the Greeks were their invention. And they say that at the same time as these were in-
vented among them, they also settled Tyrsenia, speaking thus concerning these things: in
the kingship of Atys the son of Manes, an intense famine occurredthroughoutall Lydia.
And [they say that] for a time the Lydians persevered living [with it], but that after-
wards, when it didn't stop, they sought remedies, different people contriving different
strategies against it. [They say that] there were invented then the forms of dice and
knucklebones and of ball and of all the other games except pessoi [conventionally trans-
lated "draughts"]; for the invention of these the Lydians do not claim as their own
(94?UpCOfVat 6f XV T6T? K&t i T&v K60OV Kai T&V doTpayTPXv KCi Tiq cYpaipTq KCi T&v

within particularideological formations. For definition and full discussion of "interpellation,"see Althus-
ser 1971; for significant theoretical modifications of Althusser, see Smith 1988; Silverman 1992, 15-51.
5. See Bourdieu 1977, 72-158; 1984, 466-84; 1990, 52-1 11.
6. Quotations taken from Bourdieu 1977, 167; 1990, 103.

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 ANCIENT GREEK BOARD GAMES 249

dWOWv 71acOV 7TaVYVtLoVT& ?166a, iTXkV c?c@V- to0T(V yap (OV TPV ? tUpeYtV 0ot
oiKltoDvTat Ao6oi). But they did thus with respect to the famine when they had invented
them: one day, they played the entire day, in order not to seek food, and the other day
they stopped playing and ate. In such a way they lived for eighteen years. But when the
evil did not abate, but raged still more violently, their king, thus having divided two
shares of all the Lydians, allotted one group for staying and anotherfor emigration from
the land, and over the one group allotted to stay there the king himself was in command,
and over the one departing his own child, whose name was Tyrsenos. And those who
had been allotted to go out from the land went down to Smyrna and contrived a sailing,
putting into the ships all, however much moveable property was useful to them, and
sailed away in search of livelihood and land, until, having passed many nations, they
came to the Ombrikoi, where they established cities and where they live up to this time.
And instead of Lydians, they changed their name after the son of the king who led them;
making themselves eponymous after this one, they were called Tyrsenians.

Already in antiquity, Herodotus was criticized for this claim (about the
Lydians inventing games): thus Athenaeus observes that Homer had already
representedballgames and knucklebones as elements of the heroic age, long
predatingthe reign of the Lydian King Atys.7 Given that Herodotus'report
of this invention has no apparentbasis in fact, it provokes the questions:
What motivates Herodotus' claim? In what way do games form a natural
class with prostitution, coined money, and retail trade? Why attribute the
invention of games to the Lydians?And why the peculiar insistence that the
Lydians invented all the games except pessoi?
One way of approaching these questions is to set Herodotus' list in the
context of other such inventories, which seem to have enjoyed a peculiar
popularity in the fifth and fourth centuries. Though no other source corrob-
orates Herodotus'attributionof all these inventions to the Lydians, several
fifth- and fourth-centurywriters offer analogous lists of cu6pi'paTa,
crediting
them variously to Palamedes, Prometheus,or other, foreign, cultureheroes.8
Thus Gorgias, in his set speech in defense of Palamedes (falsely accused of
treason against the Greek host at Troy by Odysseus), has his beleaguered
hero claim to be a "greatbenefactor of the Greeks and all mankind"because
of his many inventions (Gorgias frag. B 1la.30 DK):
Tiq 'yap &v ?7o0irl?C I6V dvOp6nrtov fiov ir6pt[ov 4 dir6pou Kcal KcKOYncorpTVOV C'
dK6apOu, TdaEit T? rOX0ItK&q ct5p6V P?7KoTOV siq 7tocOVcKTrpaTa, v6poio T? ypairT0o
P6XQKCt [Tr] TOi &tKaiOu, yp[taiaTd TE iVpilq 6pyavov, P?Tpa T?r Kca oTaOpa ouvaX-
ka7yiv Utn6pouq 6takkcraydq,dpt0V6v T? XprTi,dMOV qP6MCaKa, 7TUpoo6q T? KpatTicToUc Kai
T-axiCoFTOUdy7-X0Uo, 7MG006q T? XO%koi&kUnov &aTptpfv;

For who [else] could have made human life resourceful from resourceless and orna-
mented from unadorned, by inventing military tactics as the greatest [defense] against

7. Ath. Deipnosophistae 1.19A: "Herodotus is wrong in saying that games were invented in the reign
of Atys when there was a famine; for the heroic age antedated his time." ('Hp6MOTOS&? OU KaXks IpKSV
?it ATUOS Mt XtpO6vsUpE8ivat Tagt 7at8te - 7tpoP36EUt YzP TOtS Xp6VOtq T6 iPWtnK.)
8. On the motif of the 7rpCOTOc 6i5pETv, see Kleingunther 1933; Kleinguntherregards the topos as post-
Homeric, a development of sixth- and fifth-century rationalism and historical research. Xenophanes some-
where attributedthe invention of coinage to the Lydians (frag. 4 W = Pollux 9.83), but we have no way of
knowing if this was partof a list of inventions like that of Herodotus. Prometheus, of course, also figures in
such lists (e.g., Aeschylus, PV446-506), but he is nowhere credited with the invention of games.

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250 LESLIE KURKE

acts of overreaching, and written laws as guardiansof justice, and writing as an instru-
ment of memory, and weights and measures as reconciliations of commercial exchanges,
and number as the guardian of property, and fire signals as the strongest and swiftest
messengers, and pessoi as a painless pastime for leisure?

Indeed, the false accusation, trial, and condemnation of Palamedes repre-

sented a favorite topic of Attic tragedy:Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides
(along with Astydamas the Younger) are each known to have composed a
Palamedes, while we know of four separatetragediesthat staged the revenge
of Palamedes'fatherNauplius.9A staple of these plays appearsto have been
Palamedes' (or Nauplius') cataloguing of his (or his son's) beneficial inven-
tions (probably,as in Gorgias, as part of his self-defense). Thus a fragment
of Aeschylus' Palamedes credits the title character with the invention of
military tactics and three meals a day (frag. 182 R), while a fragment from
Sophocles' Nauplius attributes to Palamedes the invention of the Greek
defense wall, of number, weights and measures, military tactics, and the
"measureand courses of the stars"(Soph. frag. 432 R). Most similarto Hero-
dotus' account of the Lydian invention of games as a distractionfrom famine
is anotherSophoclean list of Palamedes'benefactions (Soph. frag. 479 R):10
o6 Xiti6v o'uoq -rCvM'biaua?, &Jv OF-Co
?i67tmv,Xp6vou -T?6tatpid aoqpoiTra;aq
(prJip? (poiaf3ou [w-rT&Ki6i0V KaCOIrutv,
ir?a 0 ia
Kf3OU; T?, Tpitv6v dpyia; &Koq;

Did this one not stop the famine from those [men], so to speak with god's grace, and did
he [not] invent the cleverest pastimes for those sitting at ease after the stroke of battle-
pessoi and kuboi as a pleasant cure of idleness?

By the fourth century, the anonymous author of Alcidamas' Odysseus had

and v6ottata along with military tac-
expanded this list to include HbOuamK1j
tics, writing, number, weights and measures,pessoi, kuboi, and fire signals
(Alcidamas Od. 22), while, by the time of Philostratus'Heroicus (second
century C.E.), Palamedes had assumed the lineaments of a universal culture
hero, responsible for inventing the seasons, the cycle of the months, the year,
and coinage, as well as the traditionalweights and measures,number,pessoi,
and writing.
Finally, Plato has Socrates attributea very similar list of inventions (in-
cluding games) to the Egyptian god Theuth, in a famous passage from the
Phaedrus. According to Socrates, Theuth "invented number and reckoning
and geometry and astronomy,and in additionpetteia and kubeia, and espe-
cially writing."Scholars have traditionallycompared these lists to question
the particularinventors, positing competing local traditions;or to trace the

9. See Goossens 1952, 150.

10. Though, as Goossens notes, Sophocles does not necessarily make the invention of games a pallia-
tive against famine in this fragment; instead, "releasing from famine" and the invention of pessoi and
kuboi are separate elements in a list of benefactions, linked simply by TS in the second line. According to
Eustathius (ad 11.228.1 = 1346.17 Valk), they used to show the stone at Troy on which the Greeks played
pessoi. Other fifth-centuryrepresentationsof Palamedes as the inventor of games: Eur.IA 195; Polygnotus,
Nekuia in the Lesche of the Cnidians at Delphi (Paus. 10.3 1. 1).

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 ANCIENT GREEK BOARD GAMES 251

direction of influence in their constitution.1" I am less interested in the

specifics of individual lists than in the phenomenon in general: What ac-
counts for the Greek fascination with such lists of inventions, and what is
the common thread that unites their elements? Specifically, why do games
figure so frequently in these inventories of culturally significant contribu-
tions? If we returnfor a moment to Gorgias'list, as the single most complete
of those closest in time to Herodotus'list, we can observe two features that
seem to characterize all its elements. First, each invention represents a
symbolic signifying system which imposes itself as a kind of second-order
organizing principle: military tactics organize fighting men; written laws
structurethe customary usages of the city; weights, measures, and number
regulate materialproperty;fire signals transformand communicatemessages
over long distances. Second, as Gorgias' rhetoric makes particularlyclear,
all these inventions are said to have a positive moral value in their service to
the community. That is to say, there seems to be an intimate connection
between each of these symbolic systems and the order of the Greek polis.12
This association of systems of symbolic logic with civic structuremakes
the final term in Gorgias' list all the more intriguing.I have thus far deliber-
ately excluded the game of pessoi from my discussion of Palamedes'inven-
tions and avoided offering any modern equivalent as a translation,in order
not to prejudge what precisely the game is and how it fits in this context. To
modern sensibilities, the games that adorn these lists (pessoi, or pessoi and
kuboi) represent the odd men out, the strange intermingling of trivial with
profound, and yet somehow their inclusion has a logic for Greek writers and
audiences. How are we to understand the functioning of games in these
inventories? Games are, after all, symbolic systems parexcellence, and their
collocation with military tactics, number,writtenlaws, and coinage suggests
that the Greeks themselves regarded them as such.
Finally, what are we to make of Herodotus' list of Lydian inventions in
the context of these other catalogues of F'pTPaTa? What emerges most
forcefully from the comparison is the oddness of Herodotus' set-coinage
coupled with prostitutionand kapeleia ratherthan military tactics and writ-
ten laws, and, as Herodotus emphasizes, all the games except pessoi. Are
the anomalies of this list conditioned by Herodotus' notion of the oddness
of the Lydians, and, if so, what is the symbolic significance of the games
Herodotus specifies here?
I would like to place the development of games within a complex cultural
and political struggle that I believe took place throughout Greece in the
archaic period, between what I would call egalitarian and elitist traditions

11. Thus Lamer 1927, cols. 1906-8; Kleinguinther 1933, 28-29; Wust 1942, cols. 2505-10 (on
Palamedes); Goossens 1952; Kemp-Lindemann 1975, 75-76.
12. This argument, which has traditionally been made for writing and the Greek city, has recently been
challenged by Steiner 1994; she argues that several of the symbolic inventions on these lists-including
writing, coinage, and fire signals-were strongly associated with Eastern despotism by sixth- and fifth-cen-
tury Greeks. While Steiner's argument is a valuable corrective to the too-easy modern association of writ-
ing, written law, and democracy, the passages considered here suggest that, at least by Gorgias' time, the
identification of these symbolic systems with the order of the polis was one available for a Greek audience.

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252 LESLIE KURKE

within the Greek aristocracy.13 The egalitariantraditionsupportedthe newly

emergent polis or city-state as its source of authority;the elitist tradition,in
opposition, founded its authority,its right to rule, on privileged links to the
gods, the heroes, and the East. Each tradition had its own characteristic
genres of poetry and performance,its own symbolic sites, and its own com-
peting cultural systems. Thus I would say (very schematically) that the
egalitarian position is characteristicallyexpressed in the genres of iambic,
(some) elegy, and choral lyric poetry, while the elitist traditionis articulated
mainly in monodic lyric poetry. Going along with this, performancesof the
egalitariantraditionare public and civic; they occupy the agora, the market-
place and public assembly. In contrast, the private symposium and the
palaestra (exercise grounds) are the symbolic sites of the elitist tradition.
Finally, I believe that the elitist traditiontends to be essentializing, insisting
on embodiment and innate nobility, while the egalitarian tradition values
function and office above inborn quality or status.
It is within the context of this last opposition that I would like to consider
games-especially the games of Herodotus' list of Lydian inventions. We
could say that there are three differentcategories of games here-games that
use the body (ball); games of chance (dice and knucklebones); and games
of order (pessoi-board games). In the archaic period, the first two catego-
ries of games correspondto the elite sites of palaestra(where you play ball)
and symposium (where you play knucklebones). The former category is
about embodiment-ball games as the way you show off the virtues of the
noble body, while the lattercategory entails an unmediatedrelation between
the player who throws the knucklebones and the workings of "fate" or "the
divine." That is, I would suggest that what I've called "games of chance" are
imagined as a kind of ordeal by those engaged in them.14 In the context of
this system, what about board games (pessoi)?
Here, I need to pause for a methodological parenthesis. The reconstruc-
tion of ancient Greek games (especially board games) is extremely difficult
and inconclusive, based as it is on brief allusions in literary texts from
Homer onward and niore extended accounts in much later commentators
and lexicographers (Pollux, Hesychius, Suidas, Eustathius; some or all of
which are dependent on a lost treatise of Suetonius, On Greek Games).
These latter antiquarianswrite long after many of the games they attemptto
identify have become obsolete, and in contexts where they are exposed to
the very different system of Roman games both facts that can distort the
informationthey transmit.As one scholar observes, "Some of the difficulties
may be realized by trying to reconstruct a game of Ombre entirely from
Pope's Rape of the Lock, or a game of cricket from Dickens' account of All
Muggleton v. Dingley Dell....-15 Nonetheless, certain facts can be es-

13. Cf. Morris 1996 for the model of competing 'middling" and "elitist" strands in archaic Greek
poetry; for the application of Morris' model to another domain of practice, see Kurke 1997.
14. For a full discussion of the elite associations of "games of embodiment" and "games of chance,"
see Kurke 1999.
15. The material in this paragraphrepresents a summary of lIamer 1927 and especially Austin 1940,
257-61. Quotation from Austin 1940. 257.

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 ANCIENT GREEK BOARD GAMES 253

tablished with some probability.Pessoi and petteia function in our sources

as generic terms, designating "boardgames" in general.16Pessoi are specif-
ically the pieces moved on the board, also called lithoi andpsephoi. Certain
board games, at least in the post-Homeric era, entailed the use of dice
(kuboi) as well as pieces on a board (pessoi), so that on occasion we find
the terms pessoi and kuboi conjoined.
The term pessoi occurs once in all of Homer-in the Odyssey, where it
characterizes the activity of the suitors of Penelope. It is worth tracing out
the theme of games in the Odyssey in some detail, for it will establish the
frameworkwithin which later symbolic references to pessoi also operate. In
schematic terms, the suitors'activity of games playing is consistently linked
with their violations of xenia, their unscrupulous and one-sided consump-
tion of another man'shousehold. That is to say, the playing of board games
marks the suitors as bad aristocrats, engaged in disembodied activity that
is itself equivalent to the vicarious enjoyment and expropriationof another's
property.It is thus characteristicof the suitors that they not only "play pes-
soi," but stage a boxing match of beggars for their own amusement (Book
18) and imagine that Penelope is to be won in the contest of the bow (Book
21). Odysseus, in contrast, proves his nobility and asserts his proprietary
and regal prerogatives by re-embodying the symbolic contest of the bow,
forcing the suitors from game to real warfare, and there destroying them.
In our very first view of the suitors (throughthe eyes of Athena disguised
as Mentes), we catch them playing pessoi (Od. 1.106-12):
supe 6' apa pvrqoYTipacdtyivopaq. oi pev tEsrtLa
scYrnYotrn
itpoidpoiOc Oupdwv Ou[t6v?TCpW0V,
fPZVOt CV pivOlot 0oV, Ob5 SKTcaVOV aOToi.
KflpUKsZ 6' a6T>roir Kati O6TlpnpOt0pdJo0VT,S
Oi psV ap' OlVOV ?pt1OYOV 9VItKpflTfpOl Katu6wp,
oi 6' a'TE oat6yyotrn WkoXuTpi-ToVYtTpanec~a
sca okk&
viCov Kai ntp6TtOsV, TOt & Kp 6caTCivTo.

And then she found the lordly suitors. They were then rejoicing their spirit with pessoi
in front of the doors, sitting on the skins of cattle, which they themselves had killed. And
their heralds and nimble servants-some were mixing wine and water in kraters, others
in turn were cleaning the tables with sponges full of holes and setting them out, still
others were dividing up many pieces of meat.

Here the suitors' disembodied pastime is significantly associated with their

vicarious appropriationof anotherman'shousehold: they lounge on the skins
of Odysseus' cattle they have themselves killed, drink his wine, and prepare
to eat his meat. This first view is emblematic, marking through their activ-
ities the suitors' transgressionof the norm of embodied exchange in xenia.
At the same time, their unproductive symbolic activity is accentuated by
contrast with the bustle of servants in attendance, preparing a banquet for
their idle masters.

16. Austin 1940, 260; Cilley 1986, 33-34.

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254 LESLIE KURKE

The precise natureof the game they played was apparentlythe source of
some speculation in antiquity,as we learn from Athenaeus(Deipnosophistae
1. 16f-17b):

Apion of Alexandria says that he actually heard Cteson of Ithacatell what sort of game
the suitors played. "The suitors," he says, "numbered one hundred and eight, and di-
vided the counters (psephous) between opposing sides, each side equal in numberaccord-
ing to the number of players themselves, so that there were fifty-four on a side. A small
space was left between them, and in this middle space they set one counter which they
called Penelope; this they made the mark to be thrown at with another counter. They
then drew lots, and the one who drew the first took aim. If a player succeeded in pushing
Penelope forward, he moved his piece to the position occupied by her before being hit
and thrust out, then again setting up Penelope he would try to hit her with his own piece
from the s(econdposition which he occupied. If he hit her without touching any other
player's piece, he won the game and had high hopes of marryingher. Eurymachushad
won the greatest number of victories in this game, and looked forward to his marriage
with confidence."In this way, because of their easy life, the suitors' arms were so flabby
that they could not even begin to stretchthe bow (OiST( 6 6t& TV TpUpflV T&L XIpaq oi
[vMoTIpC ?XOUrV (JtckL 65 PJ& T6 T64ov VTICVat 66vacrOa). (Trans. C. B. Gulick
1927-41)

Though this elaborate rendition of what is essentially a game of marbles

may strike the modern reader as absurd, the ancient scholar has in fact
picked up and expanded on the broadersignificance of this fleeting Homeric
reference to the suitors' playing pessoi. For what Cteson describes is ulti-
mately a system of symbolic or vicarious wooing, whereby the suitors com-
pete for the hand of Penelope not directly, but through the interaction of
tokens. "Penelope"here unites in a single token all the propertyand prestige
of Odysseus for which the suitors vie. Furthermore,the ancient commentator
captures the essence of an Odyssean opposition in his final rationalizing
note that the suitors' constant pitching of marbles enfeebled their arms so
that they could not string the bow. This slightly comic touch highlights the
antipathybetween the disembodied or symbolic games favored by the suitors
and proper aristocraticcontests of strength.
The final act in this dramaof games and gamesmanshipis, of course, the
contest of the bow in Book 21. The suitors engage in what they imagine is
a purely symbolic contest of strength and skill, even as they offer a series
of escalating threatsof violence to their social inferiors. And yet, finally, it
is the suitors who become the victims, as Odysseus literalizes the game and
makes them his targets. After the shot that wins the symbolic contest (the
shot through the twelve axes), the "beggar" grimly calls for dinner (Od.
21.428-30):
viv 6' 6ipn KCIt66pmovAXcatoitvTCTUKSGOat
?V (pcit, aCt>cp ?Z7Ttia KaCt&XXW WtaiaoOaC
pomfl KCai(p6pptyyu
zT ya6p T dvaOlPaTa 6aMT6.

Now it is time to make dinner for the Achaians in the light, and then afterwardsalso to
play with song and lyre: for these are the ornaments of the feast.

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 ANCIENT GREEK BOARD GAMES 255

Odysseus engages in a last disturbingbit of metaphor,likening the slaughter

of the suitors (which follows immediately) to the perennial uninvited feasts
they have enjoyed, while he transforms them from banqueters to dinner.17
In this context, his use of the verb sWtdaaOatis striking;though here it is as-
sociated with the "play"or "entertainment"of "song and lyre,"its one other
occurrence in the poem describes the suitors playing games "sitting at the
doors or in the house itself."18 Thus Odysseus' brutallyironic words here on
the verge of slaughter carry us all the way back to our first view of the suit-
ors, idly playing pessoi as they consume another man's household.
The Odyssey's patternof game and real violence constitutes an ideology
of embodiment:noble men themselves make contact with xeinoi, participate
in war or in the elegant athleticism of the Phaeacians.The suitors, in contrast,
reveal their inadequacy in this system by their predilection for substitution.
Their co-option of Odysseus' house and property has nothing to do with
xenia, since they barely reciprocate from the "body" of their own houses.
All their behavior within Odysseus' house is shaped by the same logic of
symbolic substitution:they are perennially waited on by others; they enjoy
the sexual services of the maidservantsas a substitute for those of the mis-
tress; and they use Odysseus' servants and beggars as "pawns" in their
sadistic entertainments.This whole array of inappropriatedisembodied ac-
tivity is communicated in shorthandthe first time we see the suitors, by the
significant detail that they are "playing pessoi." The use of symbolic
counters or tokens and the mediation of the symbolic space of the game
boardstand in direct opposition to the embodied ideals of Greek manhood.19
This conflict between an ideology of embodiment and symbolic activity
represented by the game board endured in Greek literature, though, strik-
ingly in the archaic and classical periods, we can trace a strand of thought
that valorized the game in opposition to the bodily ideal of the elite.
In the archaic period, two distinct forms of pessoi (neither identifiable as
the suitors' game) appear to have their origin.20The first is a game which,
according to Pollux, is called "polis" (Poll. Onom. 9.98):21

17. Stanford(1971, 2.370) notes the way in which the mention of dinnerhere recalls the poet's own omi-
nous reference to the "unlovely feast" preparedfor the suitors by "a god and a mighty man"at Od. 20.392-94.
18. Od. 17.530-38, where again the suitors' play is associated with their inappropriateconsumption of
the household goods. Apollonius Rhodius uses ?Wtdopatto describe Eros and Ganymede playing astraga-
loi at Argon. 3.118.
19. This is not to say that the Odyssey represents or endorses only what I have termed an "ideology of
embodiment";Odysseus and the text in which he figures are much more complex. Thus, for example, Odys-
seus as a bowman (especially one who uses poisoned arrows) himself controverts or problematizes an ideal
of embodied warfare, or, in other terms, we might note how embodiment characterizes both those at the top
and at the very bottom of the social scale (Odysseus as king and as beggar). For insightful discussions of
the ideological tensions and complexities of the poem, see Rose 1992, 92-140; Thalmann 1998.
20. In the following summary, I rely mainly on the arguments and conclusions of Austin 1940, who
emphasizes the need for great caution and exactitude in differentiating the various games played on a
board. Contra Lamer 1927, cols. 1937-39, I do not find any good fifth-century evidence (as opposed to
much later evidence) for the claim that the terms pessoi, psephoi, kuboi, and astragaloi were used inter-
changeably in the sources.
21. Cf. Eust. Od. p. 1397.44-45 (ad Od. 1.107): "Thereis anotherform of game 'polis, in which the tak-
ing of pieces occurs back and forth when many pieces have been disposed on spaces divided by lines. And

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256 LESLIE KURKE

6? t
6IiokkXXv W(pWv it&a6tItaXtvOiov 9oTi, X(6pct ?V ypajjtatt EXoV 6MaKFt1pvca
KCst T6 ptV ItXvOiov KCkXETQIt t6ktSc Tr&V6& W9ipwV ?KQGTTl, KUWV- 6tip jV V 6? i
660 TOWV KCTdLTdi xpOpac, f T?XVfl Tilr 7t&&61 ?oT
WJ(PWOV ItCptkrwct Tj5V 660 Wr(pwV
6[toXp6ov TrV ?TEp6Xpouv dvatp?tv-

The game played throughmany pieces is a boardthat has spaces disposed between lines;
and the board is called "polis" and each of the pieces a "dog."The pieces are divided in
two by color and the art of the game is to capturethe other-coloredpiece by surrounding
it with two of the same color.

As described by Pollux, this game functions within a general typology of

board games as a "battle game," played with many pieces (Photius tells us
there were thirty on each side), as a game of skill without dice. Within the
game, all the pieces appearto have been equal in status; that is to say, it is
more like modern checkers than chess.22 As R. G. Austin reconstructs it,
"The tactics consisted in preventingthe enemy from maintaininghis massed
formation, and by breaking through it to manoeuvre until his force was
gradually scatteredand so taken. An isolated man broughtdangerto himself
and to his side."23It is probably "polis" to which Plato and Polybius refer
as a game of strategy requiring great tactical skill. Philostratus too may
have this particulargame in mind when he characterizespetteia as "no idle
game, but one full of wisdom and needing great attention" (oi' ipdOu,ov
Trat6t6v Xkk' GrToM6, Her. 33.4).24 We know that the
6yXivouv T? Kait E'YT(aO
game existed at least as early as the second half of the fifth century, since
Pollux quotes a passage from Cratinusto illustratethe use of the termspolis
and kuon (Poll. Onom. 9.99 = Cratinusfrag. 61 KA).
A second game, called pente grammai, remains much more obscure. As
Pollux describes it (Onom. 9.97-98):
7U?VTr6& ?K6TCpOi djX? TrV ncta6VTWV ?nit nVT? ypactPP0jV, ?AKOUTO?tplTict XOpOKX?t,
satI?v7UFGG6t7UVTEypajItjtC
"KcLt P?Tyap a K6P(OV
KCti ivokCi."j3Xd" ~ ~~
T(l)V &? 7UVT?_ TV V
r& ?KT?p
Ka (pOV Ypa
0 V yp pV
appi&
jt?oTl Tt1 yV kpa KCkOU[t?V7l ypcLpaf 0 TOV 9KEAO?V KtVWV JICTTOV Capotpiacv
KCsat
9?[Oit?, KiV?t TOV ap' k?peq.

Each of those playing had five [pessoi or psephoi ] upon five lines, so that it is suitably
said in Sophocles, "five-lined boards and the throws of the dice."25And of the five lines

they used to call the lined spaces 'poleis' quite wittily. and the pieces opposed to each other 'dogs,' on
account (I suppose) of their shamelessness."
22. For the typology of board games, see Austin 1940, 259: "The simplest board-games of most coun-
tries are based on three primitive activities of man-the battle, the race, and the hunt-modern types of
which are chess, backgammon, and fox-and-geese. Such types one would expect to find among the Greek
games.... The object of the battle-game is to hem in one's opponents and drive them off the board; no
specified numberof men or size of board is needed, and in the earliest forms of the game there is no differ-
entiation of pieces; no dice are used. In the race-game, the aim is to bring one's men to an appointed termi-
nus and so be first off the board; again there is no differentiation,but the numberof men is fixed, usually 15
on each side; dice are used to control moves. In the hunt, a single piece tries to escape from an opposing
pack; no Greek or Roman game seems to have been of this type, which was common, however, in Scandi-
navia and among the early Celts." On nondifferentiationor equality of pieces as a characteristic feature of
Greek board games (as opposed to their Roman counterparts),see Lamer 1927, col. 1927.
23. Austin 1940, 264.
24. Cf. PI. Resp. 487b, Polyb.1.84 (all three references are drawn from Austin 1940, 261-66).
25. For the interpretationof this line, I follow Lamer 1927, col. 1914: Austin 1940, p. 268, n. 10.

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 ANCIENT GREEK BOARD GAMES 257

from [on?] either side there was a middle one called the "holy line"; the one who moved
the piece from there made the saying "move from the holy line."

Eustathius adds that the "move from the holy line" was the last resort for a
player who was being beaten, "whence the proverb . . . for people who
are desperate and in need of final aid" (O0ev Kact napotpia . . . ?TI TV eV
'iCO7v&crt 6oPtv(Ov f0o0?ciaq ?aXia,% Eust. II. p. 633.57-59 = 2.277.15-
17 Valk). Unfortunately,these accounts do not provide enough detail to re-
construct the game with any certainty,and modem scholars debate the exact
layout of the board and structureof play.26Thus, for example, it is unclear
whether this game involved dice as well as pieces moved on a board; the
combination of dice and board would make it typologically a "race-game"
like backgammon.There is some evidence to suggest the use of dice in pente
grammai, and we have ancient references to an unnamed game that com-
bined the throwing of three dice (kuboi) with pieces moved on a board.27If
these passages do not refer to pente grammai, they refer to a third distinct
form of petteia whose name is unknown to us.28
Even given the limited amount we can reconstruct about these games,
their names and forms of play are suggestive. The regulated, rule-bound
movement of pieces on a board appealed to the Greeks as an image for var-
ious forms of symbolic order.Thus Plato on one occasion, perhapsfollowing
Heraclitus, figures the creator of the cosmos as a pessoi-player (n?TeTU-rcT)
who disposes "parts for the sake of the whole" as he places different souls

26. For proposed reconstructions, see Becq de Fouquieres 1873, 396-405; Murray 1952, 28-29.
Lamer 1927, col. 1973 and Austin 1940, 267-71 refuse even to attempt a reconstruction (Austin observing
grimly, "The obscurity of all this evidence is impenetrable"[2681). More recently, Cilley 1986, 41-55 has
offered a new reconstruction, based largely on the study of twenty lined boards preserved in the archaeo-
logical record (Cilley 1986, 48-51, building on and expanding the catalogue offered by Pritchett 1968,
189-96).
27. Cf. Aesch. Ag. 32-33 (with notes of Fraenkel 1950, 19-22); Ar. Ran. 1400; a small painted clay
model of a gaming board from Athens, now in Copenhagen (dated to the second quarterof the sixth cen-
tury; see Breitenstein 1941, pl. 19, no. 171, reproduced in Pritchett 1968 as pl. 7.1); and the Execias am-
phora in the Vatican, on which Achilles and Ajax are clearly moving pieces on a board, but the words tria
and tesara are inscribed coming out of their mouths (hence dice throws?; for discussion of this image, see
pp. 261-63 below). Soph. frag. 429 R (cited by Poll. Onom. 9.97) may also support the use of dice in pente
grammai, but only if we assume that the two halves of the line refer to a single game.
28. In one detail I would diverge from the cautious and sensible account of Austin 1940. One reference
to the game of pente grammai in the scholia to Theocritus asserts that the piece moved from the holy line
was called "the king" (PaoskXe6,Schol. ad Theocr. 6.18.19a). Most modern scholars (Austin among them)
discount this bit of information, because it occurs in a context in which the scholiast asserts that the game
referred to is =aTpiKsov("chess"), suggesting that the commentator is conflating an obsolete board game
with a later game he knew (cf. Gow 1952, 2.122-23; Gow is inclined to credit the scholiast's claim, though
he acknowledges the difficulties). And yet, I believe there is early evidence that at least one form of pessoi
involved a piece called the king: (1) In a famously obscure fragment, Heraclitus characterizes time (ai6v)
as a "boy playing pessoi": ai6v nati ?CYTInai4aov, v
7treocYCS?V0v-
atqso
1 aosatii ("Time is a boy playing,
playing pessoi; kingship belongs to the boy," frag. B 52 DK). Though this fragment has generally been
taken to refer to the arbitraryor random nature of events in time, C. Kahn suggests that it might be better
understood as signifying the interaction of a randomizing force (throws of dice) with the rule-bound move-
ment of pieces on a board (Kahn 1979, 227, citing Marcovich 1967, 494 for the suggestion that this game of
pessoi involves dice). Kahn's notion that Heraclitus' game should combine throws of dice with pieces
moved on a board may connect it with pente grammai,and, given this suggestive context, Heraclitus'mention
of "kingship"is striking.Perhapsin terms of the metaphor,"kingship belongs to the boy" because he controls
the "king piece." (2) This possibility may find confirmationin a brief fragmentof Alcaeus quoted by Eusta-
thius to illustrate the proverb, "move from the holy line": vviv 6' 06oro ?7tKp?T?Es / Ktvfosat4 TOv (n' tpae
tntUKsvovt Xi0ov ("But now this one rules, having moved the piece from the holy line," Alc. frag. 351 V). If we

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258 LESLIE KURKE

in different bodies (P1. Leg. 903c5-el).29 According to Timaeus, petteia

"was also sometimes called 'geometry"' (7yco4tTpiav), and we are told that
Clearchus likened the five pieces in pente grammai to the five planets.30In
other contexts, petteia serves Plato as a favorite image for the process of
dialectic (e.g., Grg. 461dl-3, Resp. 487bl-c3).
But of all the things the game board and pieces can signify, I would like
to focus on the civic symbolism inherentalready in the names and structure
of these games. For the game called polis, this is clear; somehow the board
is like the city whose framing structureendows its citizens with identity and
equal status. In the case of pente grammai,the "holy line" as the midmost of
five lines may evoke the temples and sanctuaries that tend to occupy the
acropolis at the center of the city, so that the game board mimes civic geog-
raphy.31And whether it was pente grammai or some other board game that
involved the use of dice, the combination of pure chance and movement on
a board elegantly figures the mediation of the polis, which interposes itself
as a screen between individual citizens and the devastatingforce of tuche.32
But the analogy between game and city works both ways. If the board
game is somehow like the city for the archaic inventors and players of pes-
soi, the converse is also true: being a citizen in a city is a symbolic activity
like a game. It is this half of the analogy that radically unsettles the elite
"ideology of embodiment"we traced in the Odvssey.
Indeed, an anecdote involving the philosopher Heraclitus may reflect a
positive appreciationfor the gamelike quality of civic action.33According
to Diogenes Laertius (9.3):
Being asked to make laws [by the Ephesians], he disdained to do so, on account of the
city's already being ruled by a wicked constitution. And [instead] he withdrew to the
temple of Artemis and played knucklebones with the boys (pET& T&Vnai6Wv iaMpayd-
Xt4?). And when the Ephesians gathered around him, he said, "Why do you marvel, 0
worst of men? Is it not better to do this than to participate in the city with you?" (f1 oi
Kp?i1TTOV TOiTO itoCIV i
q pCO' 6p&)V iTOktTXu6?oat;)

assume that this passage refers to the rule of Pittacus as elected tyrant or aisymnetes, again the notion of a
king piece on the board suits Alcaeus' metaphoricusage. The poet bitterly and dismissively characterizeshis
opponent as (merely) a pretend king in a board game. Indeed, the evocation of a basileus piece may have
particularresonance if, as some scholars argue, the early tyrantsused basileus as their title (see Pleket 1969,
21: Oost 1972: Ogden 1997, 148-51: for Pittacus in particular,this suggestion is supportedby the language
of a Lesbian grinding song preserved by Plutarch l= Carm. pop. 23/869 PMG]: 6Xss i6kc &kct/ Kat y7&p
HlTTCaK6O D-t /I ?7y6ka MuTs*Vw Palatks wv.["Grind, mill, grind; for even Pittacus grinds, he who is
king in great Mytilene".]) Admittedly,the combination of the use of dice with a king piece in a single game
would contravene Austin's typological model (see n. 22 above), but it may be that this combination has a
particularappeal in a Greek cultural and political context.
29. Kahn 1979, p. 328, n. 302 suggests that the Platonic passage is "hauntedwith Heraclitean reminis-
cences.
30. For Timaeus and Clearchus, see Taillardat 1967, 150. 154.
31. For a particular Greek city that was designed to have five sectors, see Svenbro 1982 on Megara
Hyblea.
32. Plato on one occasion uses the image of a game combining dice and pieces on a board to allegorize
the proper relation of chance and reason in human life (Resp. 604c5-d2; cf. Plut. Mor. 467a-b).
33. For Heraclitus' positive valuation of the city and its laws, see Schottlaender 1965; Vlastos 1970,
70-73; Kahn 1979, 178-81; Seaford 1994, 221-28.

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 ANCIENT GREEK BOARD GAMES 259

Like many Heraclitean sayings and anecdotes, this one draws its point from
paradox, from the speaker's incongruous preference for children's games
over the deadly serious activity of lawmaking. And yet, in a sense, the par-
adox is doubled: children'sgames are deadly serious to them, while "making
laws" (v6piouvOcivat)is itself a symbolic activity like playing a boardgame.
It may be that Heraclitus is not opposing a game (i(T-payadktE)to "real life"
(noXrctc6ciOat),but one kind of game to another,in an effort to teach his fel-
low citizens an object lesson. (Thus, perhaps lcoXltTCcETOat has a secondary
meaning: "to play polis," like JtcTEcVEtv, "to play pessoi.") By his perfor-
mance, the philosopher may imply that being a citizen in a polis means
playing a game-engaging in symbolic activity-in deadly earnest.34
We may find the culmination of this paradoxicalstructure,again invoking
pessoi to characterizethe symbolic activity of the polis, in a famous passage
of Aristotle, which, in its complexity, needs to be quoted at length (Pol.
1.2.9-12, 1253al-18):
From these things it is evident, then, that the city belongs among the things that exist by
nature, and that man is by nature a political animal. He who is without a city through
natureratherthan chance (6 &TroXut 86a p6t5tvKat o6 8ut6 T6nXrV)is either a mean sort or
superior to man; he is "without clan, without law, without hearth,"like the person re-
proved by Homer; for the one who is such by naturehas by this fact a desire for war, as
if he were an isolated piece in a game of pessoi (alla y7ap pUT6ctTOI-TO4 KLi ToEXeoU
9TIROn1-rT#, &TE TEErp6a10 xv 6aTEEp ev nCTTOtri). That man is much more a political an-
imal than any kind of bee or any herd animal is clear. For, as we assert, naturedoes noth-
ing in vain; and man alone among the animals has speech. The voice indeed indicates the
painful or pleasant, and hence is present in other animals as well; for their nature has
come this far, that they have a perception of the painful and pleasant and indicate these
things to each other. But speech serves to reveal the advantageous and the harmful, and
hence also the just and the unjust. For it is peculiar to man as compared to the other ani-
mals that he alone has a perception of good and bad and just and unjust and other things
[of this sort]; and partnership in these things is what makes a household and a city.
(Trans. C. Lord 1984, with slight modifications)

As Austin observes, Aristotle's comparison of the apolis man to an "iso-

lated piece in pessoi" almost certainly refers to the battle game of polis, in
which a piece "has become cut off from the main force and so is in danger
itself and a danger to others."35The man who is apolis has lost his place
within the symbolic structurethatgives him identityand endows his activities

34. The same analogy of civic governance and game may inform anotheranecdote preserved in Diogenes
Laertius, as well as a fragment of Heraclitus' own writing: (1) When the Ephesians banished Heraclitus'
friend Hermodorus, the philosopher said, "The Ephesians deserve to die, every grown man of them, and
leave the city to the beardless boys" (Diog.Laert. 9.2); (2) Iamblichus tells us "how much better [than other
theorists] did Heraclitus judge in considering the opinions of men to be [mere] boys' games" (nt6cr(8fl oiv
P?Ttov 'H. tai&ov 606ppaTaa vcv6jpIKEVEtvat T& &vOp6intva 8otdacpata, frag. B 70 DK). We might also recall
the tradition that Heraclitus abdicated hereditary kingship in Ephesus in favor of his brother (Diog.Laert.
9.6)-is this the "wicked constitution"to which our anecdote refers? On Heracliteanperformances, see Bat-
tegazzore 1979, 9-25 and Steiner 1994, 22-23; cf. Martin 1993 on the analogous performancesof the Seven
Sages.
35. Austin 1940, 265; on the meaning of 6(o,, see also Tr6heux 1958.

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260 LESLIE KURKE

with sense; the polis, like the board, is the mediating structurethat gives
meaning to its citizens.36
While the narrowcontext of Aristotle'scomparisonis military (it explains
why "one who is such by nature"is a "desirer of war"), it is worth teasing
out the broaderimplications of the image of pessoi for this passage. We can
understandthe whole paragraphas an elaborate,repeatedunpackingor gloss
on its opening paradoxicalclaim, that "man is by naturea political animal."
The sentence that contains the image of pessoi reenacts the same paradoxin
its comparisonof "one who is such by nature"to a piece in a game: How can
something in nature be like a symbolic counter in a game? Aristotle pro-
ceeds to justify both paradoxes ("political by nature,""game by nature")by
the argumentthat man alone of all the animals possesses logos and therefore
the ability to perceive abstractconcepts like good and bad, just and unjust.
Thus the paragraphas a whole makes three claims: man is by naturea polit-
ical animal; man is by naturea games-playing animal; and man is by nature
a signifying animal. The implicit logic of the passage asserts the isomor-
phism of these three claims: to be one of these things is to be necessarily
each of the others. We may read this as a recasting in terms of nomos and
phusis of Heraclitus'paradox-polis is a game we play in deadly earnest.37
We should note how far we have come from the Odyssey. There, "playing
pessoi" is almost an unnaturalact, opposed to the naturalizedphysical ac-
tivity and embodimentof the good aristocrat.Four centuries later, Aristotle,
the great theorist and apologist of the polis, can unselfconsciously justify
the naturalnessof civic order by invoking the symbolic activities of games
playing and logos. In light of this double analogy-the board game is like
a city, the city is like a game-it is easier to understandthe recurrenceof
pessoi in the lists of symbolic inventions with which I began. If we return
to Gorgias'list, we recall that the links we found among its terms (excluding
pessoi) were that all the inventions represented second-order signifying
systems and all were claimed to serve the common good. We can see now
that these same features, according to Greek thinking, characterizedboard
games: for (some) Greeks of the archaic and classical periods, playing pes-
soi taught the player how to be a citizen in the polis. For the game called po-
lis, this was true in at least two senses. Narrowly understood, the rules and
strategy of this battle game impressed on its players the importanceof main-
taining their place in the hoplite battle line ratherthan becoming a6iut,"iso-
lated" (and thuspessoi goes appropriatelywith military tactics, the first item
on Gorgias' list). More broadly construed, the player learned what it meant
to submit himself to the rules and symbolic order of the city which consti-
tuted him as a citizen equal in status to all other citizens.38

36. Cf. Vernant 1988, pp. 136 and 437, n. 123 for a similar interpretationof the Aristotelian passage.
37. For other examples of pessoi used as an image in political contexts, cf. Aesch. Supp. 11-15; Ar.
Eccl. 985-88; P1.Resp. 374c2-d6. We find an intriguing turn on the image in Eur. frag. 360 N2 [= frag. 50
Austin], and P1. Resp. 422e, in which civic ideology constitutes its own essentialism. In these passages,
pessoi serve as an image of bad-because diverse and arbitrary-polis structures.
38. In this context, cf. what Thucydides has the Corinthianssay of the Athenians (as the extreme of dem-
ocratic, imperial citizen character): according to Thucydides' speaker, the Athenians "treat their bodies as

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 ANCIENT GREEK BOARD GAMES 261

It is perhaps in light of these symbolic associations that we should read

the iconographic type of the board game-playing heroes, which enjoyed ex-
traordinarypopularity from the middle of the sixth century throughthe first
quarterof the fifth. The representationof two armed heroes playing a game
on a plinth set between them occurs as early as the mid-sixth century on
carved seals and shield strapsfound in Aegina, Olympia, and near Tarentum
in Italy. But the bulk of these scenes occur on Attic vases from approxi-
mately 540 through480 B.C.E. (a recent inventory numbers 152 black-figure
and 16 red-figureversions of the scene).39Perhapsthe most famous of these
images is that on a black-figurebelly amphoraby Execias, very close to the
beginning of the series (c. 540-530 B.C.E.), currently housed in the Vati-
can.40On it, two warriors,identified by inscriptions as Ajax and Achilles, sit
fully armed on low blocks, intently moving pieces on a board set between
them. It is impossible to determine what game they are playing, though the
words tesara (four) and tria (three) inscribed next to their mouths suggest
that the game involves the throw of dice as well as pieces moved on a
board.41
Archaeologists have speculated that the image may have a literary source
in an episode from one of the lost cyclic epics, but I think this highly un-
likely.4 Instead, I would suggest that the scene is invented in the sixth cen-
tury as part of a civic appropriationof the TrojanWar story-an attemptto
translate the heroes of epic into the context of the polis. This civic appro-
priation (which has much in common with the practices of tragedy) would
account for the extraordinarypopularity of this type in the late sixth and
early fifth centuries, as well as for the fact that Athena begins to appear in
Attic versions of the scene once the iconographyis established (accordingto
Buchholz' catalogue, the goddess figures in 89 of the 168 known represen-
tations).43Finally, we should note that a marble statue group representing
the same scene appears to have been dedicated on the Athenian Acropolis
(as we know from fragments of it found in the Perserschutt).44It may be
that this same impulse to appropriatethe TrojanWar saga for the world of
the city informs the lists of Palamedes'inventions with which we began. As

if they were very much someone else's on behalf of the city" (ETt & toio pEv a6pacrtv &XXoptpoTdTotq
intEp Tir it6Xs(oq XpovTat, Thuc. 1.70.6)-like pieces played in the city's games of conquest?
39. The information in this paragraphis drawn from Buchholz' catalogue of "brettspielenden Helden"
(Buchholz 1987, 126-84; see p. 184, table 60 for statistics); cf. the catalogue of Woodford 1982, 181-84.
40. Inv. no. 16757 (344); ABV 145, 13.
41. On the indeterminacy of the game they are playing, see Lamer 1927, col. 1995; Woodford 1982,
184-85. Nonetheless, it is clear that the figures are moving pieces on a board, and this fact by itself makes
impossible the interpretation of Boardman 1978, who connects this image with Herodotus' narrative of
how the Athenian rebels at Pallene were defeated when caught unawares by Pisistratus' army as they were
"playing kuboi" (Hdt. 1.63). Whatever Ajax and Achilles are playing, it cannot be kuboi. For other cri-
tiques of Boardman, see Hurwit 1985, 260; Buchholz 1987, 183-84.
42. Thus Kemp-Lindemann 1975, 85-86 (following Robert 1892, p. 57, n. 36 and Caskey and Beazley
1931-65, 2:2) posits the lost epic Palamedeia as source for the image; cf. Lamer 1927, col. 1994; Thomp-
son 1976; Woodford 1982, 178-80 for skepticism about an epic source.
43. Buchholz 1987, p. 184, table 60.
44. See Schrader-Langlotz 1939, figs. 142, 160, and 168; Payne and Mackworth-Young1950, figs. 121,
4 and 6; 124, 3 and 6. Schrader-Langlotz date the remains to c. 500 B.C.E.; for the argument that the two
figures must be playing a board game on a plinth, see Deonna 1930; Thompson 1976.

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262 LESLIE KURKE

military tactics, written laws, weights and measures, coinage, and pessoi
progressively accrue to the Greek culture hero, the Plain of Troy comes to
look more and more like a Greek city.
To return to the specifics of Execias' image, I would suggest that this
translation to the world of the polis is implied not just by the fact that the
heroes wear hoplite armor and wield hoplite shields (which lean behind
them in this scene), but also by the fact that they are representedplaying a
board game. Or rather, a game that combines dice and pieces moved on a
board. The throw of the dice we can understand,with Jeffrey Hurwit, as an
ominous sign of the fate that awaits the doomed heroes:
[I]t is not too much to suggest that the game of chance-the focus of the scene, on
which all compositional lines (the spears, which themselves pick up the diagonal thrust
of the handles, the fixed gaze of the eyes, even the oblique words tesara and tria) con-
verge-is also a metaphorfor fate. No Greek could have failed to observe that both he-
roes would die at Troy, that Akhilleus, the victim of Paris' arrow,would be carried from
the field by Ajax himself . .. and that Ajax would fall on his own sword.45

But what Hurwit'sanalysis ignores is that the heroes play not just a game of
chance, but also a game of order:if the throw of the dice portendsthe doom
which is beyond their control, the mediation of the game board reinscribes
their individual fates within the structureand meaning of the larger civic or-
der. In the familiareuphemism of the democraticcity, to die in battle fighting
for the polis is "to become a good man."46
But, in order to be efficacious, this recuperatingcivic structurerequires
the complete identification of the individual warrior with the piece on the
game board. It is finally this identificationthat Execias' extraordinaryimage
achieves. I quote Hurwit'smasterful description of the composition:
In a panel framed by lustrous black glaze Exekias drew a symmetrical and deceptively
tranquilscene of Homeric heroes at play. Akhilleus and Ajax . . . bend over a table, call
out the roll of the dice ... and move their pieces on the board. The silhouettes are like
cutouts pasted over the undisguised red wall of the vase. And although the spears of
Akhilleus disappear behind the table and those of Ajax cross in front, the scene is flat
and seemingly backlit. The light ground is not read as air or space but as a neutral void
pushing the figures forward to the surface: luminous, it shows through the incisions
within the forms. It is as if the red ground were not considered part of the image. More-
over, the eye naturallyequates the black pictorial forms with the glaze outside the panel,
and so they seem as tightly surface-boundas the vase's ornamentalblack skin. The pla-
narity of the image is complemented by clarity of contour and precision of line, and
anyone who doubts the incising tool's capacity for lavish meticulousness need only
study the heroes' hair, cloaks (the patterns are doily-like), and armor.47

In Hurwit'sdescription, the image invites us to see the flat cutout figures as

pieces, the red ground as the surface of the game board. Indeed, we can take

45. Hurwit 1985, 260-61; cf. Vermeule 1979, 81-82; Buchholz 1987, 183-84; S. P. Morris 1997, 68-
70; S. P. Morris and Papadopoulos forthcoming.
46. For the expression, see Loraux 1986, 3, 100-101, 104-6, 168; Gould 1989, 61-62; cf. Hdt. 1.95.2,
1.169.1, 5.2.1, 6.14.1, 6.114, 7.224.1, 7.226.1-2, 9.71.3, 9.75.
47. Hurwit 1985, 260.

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 ANCIENT GREEK BOARD GAMES 263

this reading even a step further,once we note that, in Attica at least, pessoi
were often made of ornamentedbits of old pottery smoothed into circular
shapes (figure 1).48Thus the highly patternedforms of the heroes' hair, ar-
mor, and especially their cloaks, articulating the shape of their bodies, are
the very stuff of game pieces, to which the artist draws our attention by his
elaborate incising technique. In content and in style, the image affirmsthat
the heroes are played in the game of civic warfare even as they play on the
board between them.49
Let me now finally returnto Herodotus 1.94-to the Lydians'invention of
games. I have noted that Herodotus' list looks anomalous in light of other
such catalogues of inventions; we are now in a position to appreciate the
significance of the particularelements Herodotusconjoins. In terms of their
associations, I have argued that knucklebones and ballgames are elite pas-
times; yet Herodotus links these closely with the low-class activities of
prostitution and retail trade, producing an unsettling fusion of the market-
place with the palaestra and symposium. I would contend that this vertigi-
nous conjunction of what should properlybe separateis characteristicof the
Lydian ethnography as a whole. From Herodotus'perspective, what should
be the mediating term and conversion mechanism between the extremes is
the polis, which the Lydians conspicuously lack. And this lack is registered
here by the exclusion of pessoi: the Lydians do not invent pessoi because
they cannot conceptualize the symbolic order of the city. Hence the differ-
ence between Herodotus'list of Lydian inventions and the profusion of in-
ventories with which we began. Those lists, as I suggested, have as their
object the equation of polis structurewith a whole inventoryof second-order
symbolic systems; Herodotus'catalogue, by contrast, intends just the oppo-
site, exposing the schizophrenic conjunction of luxury and economic deg-
radationwhen the informing principle of the polis is lacking. Thus Croesus'
Lydians are emblems of luxurious living who prostitutetheir own daughters;

48. For game pieces made of pottery, see Lamer 1927, cols. 1901, 1997-98; Laser 1987, 126 and pl. 3c.
49. S. P. Morris and Papadopoulos (forthcoming) follow Vermeule (1979, 77-82) in seeing the icono-
graphic type of the board game-playing heroes as an Egyptian import to Greece, whose main symbolic
significance is eschatological. Thus the type of two figures playing a board game (in one instance with a
female figure standing behind) occurs in Egyptian tombs from the Eleventh Dynasty (2000-1780 B.C.E.) on,
while the moves of the Egyptian game of snt (or senet) were explicitly linked to the passage of the soul
throughthe underworldon Egyptian game boardsand in Egyptian texts (Vermeule 1979, 78-80; Cilley 1986,
5-9; Buchholz 1987, 182-83). All this endows the image of Ajax and Achilles (or two unnamed warriors)
gaming with fateful resonances. I do not regard these two readings as mutually exclusive: the interpretation
offered here is meant to supplement the eschatological reading, suggesting that Execias' image is complex
and multivalent. Thus the iconography both acknowledges the heroes' vulnerability to fate or chance and
recuperatestheir fated death within the ordering frameworkof the polis (just as the game combines the ran-
domizing effect of dice with the strategic order of pieces moved on a board). I would note that the theory of
cultural borrowing alone cannot account for (1) the sudden reappearanceof the iconography, as well as real
game boards in Greek burials, in the early archaic period for the first time since the Bronze Age (Vermeule
1979, 80-82; S. P. Morris and Papadopoulos forthcoming); (2) the transformationof the standing female
servant of the Egyptian image into Athena; (3) the fact that with only three exceptions, all Greek represen-
tations of game players are hoplites (cf. Woodford 1982, 177, who notes that the iconography in no way
requires this specialization). All three phenomena (which differentiatethe Greek images from their Egyptian
prototypes) seem to me explicable as the civic inflection of an eschatological theme. Thus we might see the
process of culturalinfluence or borrowing as the superimpositionof a distinctively Greek set of connotations
on a preexisting Egyptian model.

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264 LESLIEKURKE

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FIG1. Game pieces (pessoi) fashioned from geometric pottery fragments, found on the
northernslope of the Athenian Areopagos. Athens, Agora Museum, inv. no. P 538, P 1793-95,
P 471, P 1796-99, P 537, P 1800. Photo courtesy of the American School of Classical Studies
at Athens: Agora Excavations.

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 ANCIENT GREEK BOARD GAMES 265

recipients of a river full of gold who become the first minters of coins and
the first retail traders.
In case we missed the point, Herodotusunderscoresit with his strange eti-
ology of Lydian games. We might say that, without the polis, the Lydians
do not and cannot invent games of order (pessoi), only games of chance
(dice, knucklebones) and games of embodiment (ball). Thus the narrativeof
the invention of games is a story of the Lydians' submission to random for-
tune and physical deprivation for eighteen years. Finally, after eighteen
years of bad luck, the Lydian king essentially invents pessoi through the
bodies of his people. In the elaborately rehearsed division of the populace
in two by lot, the king seems unwittingly to have devised a game of polis
played with and on his subjects. And it is strikingly only at this point in the
narrativethat Herodotus finally attributesto the Lydians (now turnedEtrus-
cans) the "founding of cities" (?vt6p6GcarOat notktac,1.94.6). In this pas-
sage, at least, games function as partof a materialsymbology throughwhich
Herodotus thinks political and economic structuresand their interaction.
Thus in Herodoteanethnography,as in Aristotle's seemingly offhand sim-
ile and in the profusion of vase paintings of gameplaying warriors,we catch
reflexes of a cultural pattern that I would contend preexists and informs
these representations. The emergence in the archaic period of competing
systems of games-games of order,games of chance, and games of embod-
iment-seems to go hand in hand with the emergence of new political, so-
cial, and economic structures.This is not to claim that a particularGreek
individual or set of individuals consciously invented the game of polis, say,
or kottabos, in orderto reflect and reproducethe egalitarianorderof the city
or the hierarchicalrelations of the elite symposium; that would be to repli-
cate the Greeks' own mythopoeic obsession with the protos heuretes, the
"first inventor,"as well as to succumb to an inappropriatelanguage of in-
tentionalism. Instead, I would suggest that by a kind of social alchemy that
is impossible to reconstruct in retrospect, cultural formations produce the
practical apparatusthrough which they perpetuate themselves. Games are
one such form of practice, doing their work more effectively because they
are unassuming, trivial, and pervasive. Thus playing the board game polis
might help form a Greek boy as a citizen of the city.

University of California, Berkeley

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