Aleae aut tesserae? The meanings of gaming opponents in the Rome of Ammianus Marcellinus

Many ancient writers have left testimonies about the social significance of Roman leisure. Rather than trying to draw an artificial presentation of the tabula lusoria of Late Antiquity, this paper considers the meaning of an Ammianus Marcellinus’ description of the Roman attraction for the alea. The focus here is on the board games played at Rome at the end of Late Antiquity in order to better understand the text. A first step is to analyze relations between urban society, aristocratic values and gaming practice. A second step consists in clarifying the gaming vocabulary of alea and more precisely the use of the word tessera. The guiding hypothesis is that tessera does not mean just “dice” but also “pawn”, and more generally the instrumentum of the gaming board.

As a result, I suggest that Ammianus was not just a malicious observer but a very fine satirist who turned the aristocratic discourse against the nobilitas of Rome.