Roman games

Diese  Arbeit  präsentiert  eine  durch  interdisziplinären  Ansatz  (archäologische  Funde,  historische  Quellen, Überlieferung, archivalische Forschung, Stadtplanung, Onomastik, Religionswissenschaft ...) geprägte Übersicht der Distribution erkundeter und indizierter Amphitheater im Bereich der ostadriatischen Küste (Pola, Iader, Corinium, Burnum, Aequum, Tilurium, Salona, Epidaurum und Dyrrachium ). Auch römische Amphitheater werden durch das Prisma der Fragen, wie in etwa denen der Ortung, Datierung, Morphologie und Struktur der Amphitheater in den definierten Bereichen unter Wahrung ihrer individuellen Entwicklung und Spezifi tät bearbeitet. Angesichts der Stärke und Nachhaltigkeit eventueller Argumente und Indizien der Möglichkeit einer Existenzeiner einer solchen, zur Unterhaltung des römischen Volkes errichteten Einrichtung, kann man sagen, dass diese Arbeit die erste umfassende Untersuchung der römischen Amphitheater im Bereich der ostadriatischen Küste darstellt.



U ovom se radu interdisciplinarnim pristupom (arheološki nalazi, povijesni izvori, predaja, arhivska istraživanja, urbanizam, onomastika, religijska istraživanja...) daje prikaz distribucije istraženih i indiciranih građevina amfiteatara na prostoru istočnojadranske obale: Pola, Iader, Corinium, Burnum, Aequum, Tilurium, Salona, Epidaurum i Dyrrachium. Rimski se amfi teatri također obrađuju, i to kroz prizmu pitanja poput ubikacije, datacije, morfologije i organizacije građevina amfiteatara na definiranim prostorima, poštivajući pritom njihov zaseban razvoj i specifičnosti.

Razmatrajući jačinu i održivost možebitne argumentacije i indicija mogućnosti postojanja jedne takve građevine za zabavu
rimskog puka, može se reći da ovaj rad predstavlja prvu širu studiju rimskih amfiteatara na prostoru istočnojadranske obale.

In Roman antiquity, gladiator fights reproduce a managed crisis: the spectators transfer the violence that could oppose each other onto the gladiator, rejecting it out on the community and channelling it against its opponent. Once the fight has ended, the spectators are once again united in the celebration of Victoria getting rid of the atrocity of death. Infames because touched by the taint of death and money, they are nonetheless fighters that provide catharsis. Moreover rites rule this act that breaks the taboo of violence within the area of the pomoerium. The arena for example is surrounded by herms delimiting the area of the games into a separate world, distinct from the one of the humans and the gods whose devoted statues and icons accompanies the spectators. Moreover civilizing gest of the gods and their myths are also staged in the arena, and their statues are brought into the amphitheatre during the inaugurating pompa. Trough the richness of this type of representations, romans show the strength of their institutions and the world order. The games are integrated within rites that renew the pax deorum and they guarantee the values and the domination of the romans using the divine assent. Gladiatoral fight like sacrifice is part of the self-regulating mechanisms, a collective transfer achieved through representations perceivable by everyone.

Where, how long, and in what manner did the Roman games continue? While this note does not pretend to answer these questions definitively, they are nevertheless here approached in light of new studies, with special attention paid to the burden of tradition, which seems often to obscure — if unconsciously — part of history. The “effort of memory” is not an exclusively modern phenomenon. Whatever the mechanisms which trigger it might be, it is ubiquitous in all times and in all civilisations, and manifests itself by means of different modalities, be they oral or written, mythological or historical. Memory is an integral part of people's knowledge of their own time. Whatever form it takes and whatever events or personalities it seeks to highlight, memory is necessarily selective, and the portrait is draws is partial, in every sense of the word. More often than not, the choices made by memory generate ignorance, and this ignorance is perpetuated rather than eliminated by subsequent generations, until eventually deeply embedded in the transmission of our knowledge. Late Antiquity has been profoundly affected by the capriciousness of memory. A telling illustration is provided by the Roman games, which the so-called Renaissance and following centuries preferred to have disappear with the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Christianity. This “faulty memory” even persists to a certain extent today.

Several artefacts related to gaming were unearthed in Apulum, coming from the civil
areas, the fort or the necropolises. Their majority is represented by bone or antler counters and dices. Our paper focuses mainly on the game supports, rather than on these categories of small finds. The aim of the study is to present four unpublished game boards, used for the Nine Men’s Morris game, for ludus latrunculorum and for a game that we cannot precisely name, either latina gaudes or another one, unknown to us.

Inscriptions do not provide relevant information about the functions of the praetores Etruriae apart from their nomenclature and social background. Nor does a more careful reading of CIL XI 5170 lead to the assertion that the praetor Etruriae was responsible for the organization of games. The derivation from the ancient Etruscan federal office has often suggested a relationship with the sacerdotes of the Hispellum Rescript; nevertheless, there does not seem to be any direct connection with the coronati Tusciae et Umbriae.

Academic debate on gladiator combats in the Roman provinces of the Black Sea is almost completely lacking. The issue was recently introduced into the scholarly debate on the Black Sea region following the published research of Elisabeth Bouley (2001) in France and Lyudmil Vagalinski (2009) in Bulgaria, and the thesis defended by the author in 2015 in the Faculty of History, University of Bucharest. This paper aims to integrate these new research themes, gladiatorial shows and other
performances associated with philotimia in the context of research on the Black Sea, by means of approaching, in this case, the buildings that have and could have played host to such events (definitely or more uncertainly). The archaeological evidence of monuments, distribution and typology of specific constructions, their diversity and the transformations undergone, the seating, etc. are all elements that will be presented and debated in order to enhance our knowledge and to
understand better both the diffusion of these events in the Roman provinces of the Black Sea and the impact they had after being adopted and practised by local communities.

In 2010 a Roman token was discovered in the mud of the Thames near Putney Bridge in London. When the token was discovered to have an erotic image on one side and a Roman numeral on the other, and was identified in a Museum of London press release as a rare Roman " brothel token " , the press reported on the story in the expected manner, for example: " A Roman coin that was probably used by soldiers to pay for sex in brothels has been discovered on the banks of the River Thames " (Daily Telegraph, 4 Jan 2012) and " Bronze discs depicting sex acts, like the one discovered in London, were used to hire prostitutes – and directly led to the birth of pornography during the Renaissance " (Guardian, 4 Jan 2012). Even before this particular spate of media interest, these curious tokens have generated confusion, speculation and prurience – often simultaneously. They are of interest to games scholars because the speculation often includes the suggestion these objects may have had a ludic function, and were used as game counters. This paper will look at some of the proposals that have been offered by way of explanation of these peculiar objects. Eddie Duggan is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Science and Technology at the University of Suffolk. He has recently contributed " Squaring the (Magic) Circle: A Brief Definition and History of Pervasive Games " to Nijholt ed. Playable Cities, Springer (2017) and, with Professor David Gill, co-edited a volume of conference proceedings: From Cardboard to Keyboard: Proceedings of the XVII Annual Colloquium of the International Board Game Studies Association, Associação Ludus, Lisbon (2016).

This chapter in the catalogue 'Keys to Rome' accompanying the permanent displays of the Roman collections of the Allard Pierson Museum Amsterdam, deals with games, toys and leisure in the Low Countries in Roman times, focussing on the question if the 'ludic landscape' changed under Romanisation.