Dice

DICE, small cubes of ivory, bone, wood or metal used in gaming (O.Fr. de, derived from Lat. dare, to give). The six sides of a die are each marked with a different number of incised dots in such a manner that the sum of the dots on any two opposite sides shall total seven. Dice seem always to have been employed, as they still are, for gambling, and in games like backgammon. There are many methods of playing, from one to five dice being used, the dice being thrown on to a smooth surface either from the hand or dice-box.

It is a remarkable fact that, wherever dice have been found, whether in the tombs of ancient Egypt, of classic Greece, or of the far East, they differ in no material respect from those in use to-day, the elongated ones with rounded ends found in Roman graves having been not dice but tali, or knuckle-bones. Eight sided dice have comparatively lately been introduced in France as aids to children in learning the multiplication table. The teetotum, or spinning die, used in many modern games, was known in an cient times in China and Japan.

The increased popularity of the more elaborate forms of gaming has resulted in the decline of dicing. One method is to throw three times with three dice. If one or more sixes or fives are thrown the first time, they may be reserved, the other throws being made with the dice that are left. The object is to throw three sixes = 18 or as near that number as possible.

The most popular form of pure gambling with dice at the present day is craps, or crap-shooting, a simple form of hazard, of French origin. Two dice are used. Each player puts up a stake and the first player may cover any or all of the bets. He then "shoots," i.e., throws the dice from his open hand upon the table. If the sum of the dice is 7 or II the throw is a nick, or natural, and the player wins all stakes. If the throw is either 2, 3 or 12 it is a crap, and the player loses all. If any other number is thrown it is a point, and he continues until he throws the same number again, in which case he wins, or a 7, in which case he loses. Poker dice are marked with ace, king, queen, jack, ten and nine spot. Five are used and the object is, in three throws, to make pairs, triplets, full hands or fours and fives of a kind, five aces being the highest hand. Straights do not count.

History.

Dice were probably evolved from knucklebones. The antiquary Thomas Hyde, in his Syntagma, records his opin ion that the game of "odd or even," played with pebbles, is nearly coeval with the creation of man. It is almost impossible to trace clearly the development of dice as distinguished from knuckle bones, on account of the confusing of the two games by the ancient writers. It is certain, however, that both were played in times antecedent to those of which we possess any written rec ords. Sophocles, in a fragment, ascribed their invention to Pala medes, a Greek, who taught them to his countrymen during the siege of Troy, and who, according to Pausanias (on Corinth, xx.) , made an offering of them on the altar of the temple of Fortune. Herodotus (Clio) relates that the Lydians, during a period of famine in the days of King Atys, invented dice, knucklebones and indeed all other games except chess. The fact that dice have been used throughout the Orient from time immemorial, as has been proved by excavations from ancient tombs, seems to point clearly to an Asiatic origin. Dicing is mentioned as an Indian game in the Rig-veda. In its primitive form knucklebones was essentially a game of skill, played by women and children, while dice were used for gambling, and it was doubtless the gambling spirit of the age which was responsible for the derivative form of knucklebones, in which four sides of the bones received different values, which were then counted, like dice.

Gambling with three, sometimes two, dice (Kiv Sot) was a very popular form of amusement in Greece, especially with the upper classes, and was an almost invariable accompaniment to the sym posium, or drinking banquet. The dice were cast from conical beakers, and the highest throw was three sixes, called Aphrodite, while the lowest, three aces, was called the dog. Both in Greece and Rome different modes of counting were in vogue. Roman dice were called tesserae from the Greek word for four, indicative of the four sides. The Romans were passionate gamblers, espe cially in the luxurious days of the empire, and dicing was a favourite form, though it was forbidden except during the Satur nalia. The emperor Augustus wrote in a letter to Suetonius con cerning a game that he had played with his friends: "Whoever threw a dog or a six paid a denarius to the bank for every die, and whoever threw a Venus (the highest) won everything." In the houses of the rich the dice-beakers were of carved ivory and the dice of crystal inlaid with gold. Mark Antony wasted his time at Alexandria with dicing, while, according to Suetonius, the emperors Augustus, Nero and Claudius were passionately fond of it, the last named having written a book on the game. Caligula notoriously cheated at the game ; Domitian played it, and Com modus set apart special rooms in his palace for it. The emperor Venus, adopted son of Antoninus, is known to have thrown dice whole nights together.

Fashionable society followed the lead of its emperors, and, in spite of the severity of the laws, fortunes were squandered at the dicing-table. Horace derided the youth of the period, who wasted his time amid the dangers of dicing instead of taming his charger and giving himself up to the hardships of the chase. Throwing dice for money was the cause of many special laws in Rome, according to one of which no suit could be brought by a person who allowed gambling in his house, even if he had been cheated or assaulted. Professional gamblers were common, and some of their loaded dice are preserved in museums. The common public houses were the resorts of gamblers, and an old fresco is extant showing two quarrelling dicers being ejected by the indignant host. That the barbarians were also given to gaming, whether or not they learned it from their Roman conquerors, is proved by Taci tus, who states that the Germans were passionately fond of dicing, so much so, indeed, that, having lost everything, they would even stake their personal liberty. Centuries later, during the middle ages, dicing became the favourite pastime of the knights, and both dicing schools (scholae deciorum) and guilds of dicers existed. In France both knights and ladies were given to dicing, which repeated legislation did not abolish. In India and the Far East dice have always been popular and are still.

Dice-boxes have been made in many shapes and of various materials, such as wood, leather, agate, crystal, metal or paper, and many of them contain bars within to ensure a proper agita tion of the dice, and thus defeat trickery. Some, formerly used in England, were employed with unmarked dice which were thrown upon a board marked with squares numbered from I to 6.

See L. Becq de Fouquieres, Les Jeux des Anciens (1869) ; Bolle, Das Knncheispiel der Alten (Wismar, i886) ; Stewart Culin, Chinese Games with Dice (Philadelphia, 1889) ; Korean Games (Philadelphia, 1895) ; R. F. Foster, Encyclopaedia of Indoor Games (new ed. 1916). Historie du Canada, etc., par Gabriel Sagard Theodat (new ed. Paris, 1866, vol. 1, pp. 243-4).

North American Indians are said to have played dice as far back as 1636. In his revelations of the time, Father Brebeuf gives long accounts of the game, the causes for its being played and the excesses in gambling to which it led. Even up to about 186o, the Indians were known to stake all they had, frequently losing all their earthly possessions. Dice or Craps was a popular game among the American soldiers in France during the World War, the Afro-Americans possessing a marked fondness for the "bones."