The game of little soldiers
Ludus latrunculorum means "the game of little soldiers" (or bandits). It was the Romans' great game of pure strategy, with no dice at all.
What the Romans left us
Roman writers mention the game from the late Republic onward: Ovid, Seneca, and later Isidore of Seville. Seneca tells of Julius Canus, condemned by the emperor Caligula, who was calmly finishing a game when the guard came for him. He counted the pieces and told his opponent not to claim afterwards that he had won. A poem in praise of a man called Piso, the Laus Pisonis, describes clever play in detail: counters pinned between enemies, lines broken open, and a player winning with his own ranks still whole.
Grids for the game have been found all over the empire, especially in army forts. Many are scratched into stone or roof tiles and are between 6 × 7 and 14 × 14 squares, not always square. The counters were often small domes of coloured glass.
Two reconstructions
Locus Ludi, after Piso
From Locus Ludi, a research project on ancient games at the University of Fribourg, reading the Laus Pisonis. The board is 8 × 8 with twenty counters each. First the players take turns placing counters anywhere, with no captures. Then each turn one counter steps to a neighbouring empty square. Trap an enemy between two of yours in a row or column, or in a corner with your counters on its two sides, and it is captured. A counter that steps between two enemies on its own is safe. You can't move the same counter straight back and forth. The game ends when a side is down to one counter or can't move, and whoever captured more wins.
Museum Quintana
The rules shown at Museum Quintana, a museum of the Roman fort at Künzing in Germany. Sixteen counters each start in two rows facing each other. Counters move any distance in a straight line, up, down or sideways, like a rook in chess. Trap an enemy between two of yours to capture it. Take all the enemy counters to win.
Choose Your own rules on the home screen to try other readings: start by placing counters or in rows, step one square or move like a rook, capture in corners or not, forbid stepping straight back, and win on captures or by taking every counter.
Other scholars read the evidence differently. Ulrich Schädler's reconstruction has trapped counters freeze first and be removed on a later turn, and counters leap over one another. The Ludii database lists more than a dozen versions.
A possible descendant
Some historians wonder whether latrunculi, spread by the Roman army, helped inspire the tafl games of northern Europe, such as hnefatafl, which also capture by trapping between two pieces. It's an attractive idea, but it is speculation.
Choices this version makes
- In the Piso version, "place the rest for me" fills the remaining placements at random for both sides. It's there so you don't have to tap forty times.
- The back-and-forth rule stops a counter going straight back to the square it just left on your very next move.
- If fifty moves each go by with no capture, the game ends. Whoever is ahead wins: on captures when the most captures win, or on counters left when you must take them all. Level means a draw.
Sources
- Locus Ludi, University of Fribourg: Ludus latrunculorum
- Ludii Portal: Ludus Latrunculorum (all rulesets, with sources)
- Schädler, U. (1994, 2001). Reconstructions of latrunculi, as summarised in Ludii.
- Wikipedia: Ludus latrunculorum