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Ludus latrunculorum

Posted: Sun Mar 03, 2013 2:50 am
by Sybil
Hi everyone,
i come from Italy and i'm a researcher of history, i also teach Latin and Italian.

I'm working on the latin language, I showed my students the Hnefatafl 's game and together we tried to understand if the Latin version was different and if it could rebuild.

There was, i saw, the Italian version of the game, but I like to work on a historical research on Latin "latrunculi"' sgame.

Do you already have something? Are you interested? Can I do anything?

Sorry for my english!

Re: Ludus latrunculorum

Posted: Sun Mar 03, 2013 8:40 am
by Hagbard
Sybil wrote: I showed my students the Hnefatafl 's game and together we tried to understand if the Latin version was different and if it could rebuild.
There was, i saw, the Italian version of the game, but I like to work on a historical research on Latin "latrunculi"' sgame.
Do you already have something?
Robert Charles Bell's book "Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations", published 1960, republished 1969 and 1979, has a chapter about the Roman board game Ludus Latrunculorum.

Ludus Latrunculorum is considered to be the immediate predecessor to the Scandinavian tafl game. In ancient times there were connections between the Roman Empire and Scandinavia to the extent that the period 0-400 of Denmark's past is called the Roman Iron Age. And so one of the many things that flowed up here from the Roman Empire was the board game Ludus Latrunculorum, but transformed into the Scandinavian game tafl.

The Berserk Hnefatafl variant, which was shaped here on this site to be used with the special Bergen Museum game pieces, introduces (reintroduces?) several features taken directly from Latrunculorum: there's the berserk moves, and the behaviour of the commanders is that of the Latrunculorum Duxes.

Ludus Latrunculorum

Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2013 12:19 am
by crust
Ciao Sybil,
Damian Walker has written about Ludus Latrunculorum on his "Cyningstan" website, and there is an applet of the game you can play (though it doesn't seem to work on my computer)http://boardgames.cyningstan.org.uk/play.php?id=66