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DICE GAMES Roman dice look just like the ones you use today. The numbers on the opposite sides always add up to 7 - the one is always opposite the six. They may be used on there own, or in pairs, gambling on the score thrown, or they may be used with a board game. Roman soldiers also liked to play dice games. They probably also liked to gamble on them. Some of them even cheated too!! There was a dice found at Vindolanda that had been “loaded” by weighting the number 1 so that it always fell on Number 6. Was it lost or was it hidden? Did the owner get caught and the cheating dice get thrown away, or did the others thump him too much for him to get it back from where he hid it?
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BONE GAMES Similar to Dice games, it was very popular to play games with animal bones. Usually it would be ankle bones or knuckle bones from sheep. The most popular game was similar to the modern game of "Jacks".
The knuckle bones were thrown into the air and caught on the back of the hand, to see how many could be caught. Another form of the game was more like dice. The 4 bones were thrown into the air and allowed to fall. As each of the 4 sides of a knuckle bone is different, it was a bit like a 4 sided dice. Each of the four sides would be given a value. The patterns of the 4 bones values would be given names, and were easily recognised by regular players. This was more of an adult game as lots of money would be gambled on it.
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| Roman ladies playing knuckle bones |
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