Words on Wednesdays: Home

"Home is where one starts from"

T.S. Elliot

My name is Qin Li and I am on a work placement with the Learning and Participation team as part of my MA study. During my placement, the most appealing and the most difficult work for me was my ‘Words on Wednesday’ handing table. For my table, I chose the topic of  'at home with a Roman Family', which is mainly about the day to day activities of the Romans at home. There were three themes on my table, women’s work at home - textile working, leisure activities - gaming (board games) and dinner.

My handling table

During my display, I used the timeline of the day to join these different themes. When Roman women were at home during the daytime, one of their main tasks was textile working. They were spinning and weaving yarn and making clothes for their families. Due to demand for clothing, the family workshop gradually developed into an industry and played an important role in the Roman economic system. In the Roman Baths collection, I found spindle whorls of various shapes and colours, they are my main objects in this section. Some loom weights and needles were also displayed on the table.

Spindle whorls made of pottery and shale

The second part of my display was about Roman leisure activities after work. When they were at home or in the bath house, they enjoyed some leisure time. Gaming is one of the things they did. They used counters, dice and other things to play the board games. In this section, I showed counters of different materials. The Romans used counters of different materials such as ceramic, shale, glass and bone. Visitors seemed to be attracted by the beautiful glass counters.

Gaming counters made of black and white glass and worked bone

After the end of work and leisure time, they had dinner time. I chose to show the pots and dishes which were used to serve on the table in this section. Ceramic pots of different colours and textures were chosen. One of my favourite objects is a piece of Samian ware pottery. The mould-made decoration on the Samian is very beautiful, which also attracted visitors’ attention. This piece of Samian is in a good condition and visitors were able to touch it.

Samian bowl rim

At my table there were some activities to engage with visitors. In the working section, a replica of the spindle was provided. I tried to learn the Roman spinning technique when I was researching my table. Visitors were very happy to see me show it! In the gaming part, a Roman board game was there for visitors to play. Merels, the Roman three-in-a-row game, attracted many people. Most of them chose to take a board game home with them when they left the table. I hope this little game will give all the visitors good memories of this handling table.

Visitors enjoying a game of Merels

Qin Li
Placement Student

Let the Games Begin

If you ask a child today how they occupied their free time, most answers would be – playing on some type of gaming console, watching the Telly, or being outside playing some sort of sport with their mates.

Unfortunately Romans didn’t have these types of option available to them. While there is the possibility to have an outside sport like game (using a ball) during the Roman period, it was more likely you would catch a child with some sort of board game or a nut (marble) game.

The first game, entitled Orca, allows each play to have 5 nuts that they take turns to try and throw them into a bucket. The winner is determined by which ever player gets the most nuts of their original 5 into the bucket. The name Orca is a Latin term that means whale, which in this game the whale (or to be specific its mouth) is represented by the bucket.

The next game is called Delta. Delta is a Greek letter that is in the shape of a triangle (Δ). Delta also is a triangle deposit at the mouth of a river. So it is not surprising that the Delta Game Roman children played involves nuts (again) being thrown onto a triangle on the ground. The triangle is divided into 10 sections and after each child has thrown all 5 nuts, they count up their scores.

Additionally there is the Rolling Walnut Game where competitors start with 10 nuts, and roll them down a slope one at a time in an attempt to hit their opponent’s nut, which they then get to keep. The player with the most nuts wins.

Finally there is Castellatae. This begins with five small clusters of nuts (3 walnuts and 1 on top). Each player has 5 nuts and tries with five throw to disturb the nut clusters. The units he/she has managed to hit are theirs to keep. After that the clusters are reconstructed from a ‘large’ pot and the next player tries in turn. Whoever has the most nuts after 5 rounds is the winner.

These are only some games that Roman Children would play, if you are in the Bath area tonight and fancy learning about these and other games, visit the Roman Baths Museum between 6:00 pm and 8:00 pm tonight, 10 July 2013, at the Great Bath where Bethan will be there explaining more games and leisure activities that the Romans participated in.

Additionally you can see these Roman games in action on 15th July 2013 at 1:30pm, on the Kingston Parade during the Beau Street Hoard Funding launch. The children playing the games have been working with the Learning & Programmes co-ordinator to learn these games and create their interpretation of Roman Coins for the event

Otter Class from Moorlands School painting their coins

Along with these games, there will be an actual Roman Priest and Roman Soldier along with our modern day Roman Gladiators – two of the Bath Rugby players



Bath Rugby's Olly Woodburn



Bath Rugby's Ben Williams









If you are in Bath and want to witness this amazing event, stop by – it is free to all and donations for the Beau Street Hoard are welcomed!

-Jenn









 







Roman board games at the Baths.

After writing about ball games enjoyed by Roman visitors to the baths, we looked at board games played while relaxing beside the various pools.

Counters and dice from the Roman baths at Caerleon, Wales

The Romans played many different gambling and board games using dice, counters and marked boards. Some of these objects have been found when archaeologists have investigated the drains, pools and buildings around their baths. Dice were usually made from bone or wood, while counters were made from bone, pottery, stone or glass. Gameboards were mostly wooden but could be marked onto stone blocks or clay tiles.

Gambling games included Tali (knucklebones) and Tesserae (dice), while board games included Ludus Latrunculi (little robbers), Calculorum (pebbles), Ludus Duodecima Scripta (twelve lines), Tabula (board), and Merels (nine men’s morris). While the Roman rules for these games are not well understood, versions of many of these games are still played today.

Roman tali made of glass and rock crystal. Image: Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.

Tali were originally the knucklebones of sheep or goats but were later made from other materials. They were tossed as a group of four, and each side had a value of 1, 3, 4 or 6.

Tesserae was played with three dice. The numbers on the dice were placed so that opposite sides added up to seven. Some dice have been found which have lead inserted in one side to unbalance them and make them fall to show a particular number.

Ludus Latrunculi was a game of military tactics played with coloured counters on a board marked with squares. Similar to chess, the goal was to surround and capture the other player’s counters.

Calculorum used the same board as Latrunculi but with many more counters. To win the game, a player had to make a row of five counters across, down or diagonally.





Board used for Ludus Latrunculi and Calculorum.

Image: St Albans Museum


Ludus Duodecima Scripta had two players each with fifteen counters. Players threw dice to move counters along marked rows, then off the board. Many counters could occupy the one space and single counters sent back to the start. Tabula was similar but used twelve columns.

A Merels board consisted of three squares joined by extra lines. Two players each placed nine counters in turn on the board and moved them along the lines to make rows of three. This allowed the removal of one of your opponent’s counters. The game was won when a player had taken all but two counters.

Stone carved with Merels game. Image: Creswell Heritage Trust

Nicola Pullan, intern from the University of Sydney

The Games the Romans Played

Glass ball

 This week we are preparing for the February half-term family activity at the museum. We will be looking at Roman entertainment and leisure so I have been researching some interesting facts about the games which Romans played when they visited the baths.

For the Romans, visiting the baths was both an enjoyable social time and a way of getting clean. Visitors went to the baths to bathe, exercise, meet friends, chat, relax and play Ludus (board games). Use of the baths was not limited to only one group of people but included senators, soldiers, merchants, workers, families and slaves.

After bathing, visitors could relax in the alcoves to eat and drink, discuss business, and gamble or play board games. Romans were very keen on gambling and board games. Historians think that many of these were played while socialising at the baths. Entertainers such as musicians and jugglers may also have been walking around.

The half-term holiday activity will be looking at board games played at Roman baths, but we have also found out about the ball games which the Romans enjoyed.

Ball games were often played for exercise and, although we are unsure of the exact rules for many of these, it is obvious that at least one needed a lot of skill to play. This game was called Trigon and was a throwing, batting and catching game between three players. The most skilful players would bat or catch with their left hand, and sometimes the game was played with a ball made of glass.

Hand holding a glass ball

Historical texts tell us of a catching game, probably Trigon, which was played in the baths of Trajan by a man named Ursus who used a ball made of glass. An inscription tells us that the ‘people approved with greatest applause’.

Roman balls have names, such as trigon, pila, follis, paganica and harpastrum depending on their size and use. They were made of many different materials. Bouncing balls, like the follis, were made from pig’s bladder wrapped in leather or from animal sinew wound into a ball and covered with leather for protection.

Other balls were made from chopped sponges or linen and hair, then wrapped with string and cloth, and often covered with shaped and sewn pieces of cloth. These balls would not have bounced at all well and would possibly have been used for catching games.

Nicola Pullan is a visiting researcher from the University of Sydney.

Ref.

http://www.aerobiologicalengineering.com/wxk116/Roman/BallGames/trigon.html

Glass ball images
Fagan, Bathing in Public in the Roman World, 195–196. On the glass ball game and interpretations.

Part I – Let the Games Begin!

Illustrations of the gladiator and gladiatorial combat by one of our volunteers, James.

The Olympic Games may have begun in Greece but they were very much affected by the rise of the Roman Empire, particularly as many Greek athletes were ‘adopted’ by Rome – which meant that sometimes there weren’t enough competitors to hold a full programme of events!

One sport of the ancient world which seems to fascinate us is the Roman gladiatorial contest, which, in its own time was not very controversial at all. This is hard for us to get our heads around because we’re not used to such brutality in the entertainment industry, but we’ll see in the second part of this blog next week that the Romans viewed these competitions very differently to us.

Gladiatorial games seem to have started around 264 BC when slaves fought at the funerals of noblemen for entertainment. Over time the fights began to be held for their own sake, and they became a useful way for Emperors to keep their people happy.

So who were these gladiators? Most obviously: slaves and criminals. Criminals could be condemned ‘to the sword’ (execution by a gladiator) or to train at a gladiatorial school, which at least gave them the opportunity to learn and develop the skills which could save them. Remarkably though, by the end of the Roman Republic half of all gladiators were voluntary free men, probably lured by the down payment.

The ludus magnus – the best-known training ground for gladiators.

Gladiators trained in schools, the most famous of which was the ludus magnus, set just beside the Colosseum. These schools usually pitted their own gladiators against each other, because being killed by a comrade was considered preferable to being killed by a stranger. Just like today, the contestants warmed up first - in their case fighting with blunted or wooden weapons. Fights lasted around fifteen minutes, and were usually between pairs of gladiators, though mass fights did sometimes take place.

There were many different types of gladiator, each with his own armour, weaponry and, above all, fighting style. Participants were usually paired up with a different gladiator type to make for a more interesting contest, given the varying advantages and disadvantages of each type. Though there were no points to be won, only victory, there were still strict rules and a referee to enforce them.

On the surface, the world of the gladiator seems poles apart from our sporting contests, but in the end the games were about winners and losers, as they will be in London come July.

Be sure to look out for part II, where we explore how the gladiator was perceived in his own city.

Sources:

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/gladiators/gladiators.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/romans/gladiators_01.shtml

Gladiators and Caesars: The Power of Spectacle in Ancient Rome, ed. Kohne, E., and Ewigleben, C., London 2000