All’s Fair in Love and Games

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Announcer: This is a Getty Podcast.

[Theme music begins]

Host: Let the good times roll, because today we hear from an ancient kind of dice!

Welcome to If Objects Could Talk, a podcast where art and artifacts get to leave the museum vault and share their side of the story. Thanks for joining us as we bring objects into the light!

[Theme music ends]

What kinds of games do you like to play? Any favorite board games?

[Kid saying “yes” excitedly]

Maybe something with dice?

[Dice clatter]

Kids just like you have been playing games for, well, for as long as there have been kids!

[Playful Roman-style music begins]

In ancient times, a lot of those games were played with dice, just like many modern games. But Roman kids used a special type of die they called an astragalos, which means knucklebones—because they were made from the knucklebones of sheep or pigs!

Today’s guest is a special glass astragalos and for the last 2000 years, since he was made, this acrobatic die has been a champion of fun.

[Music ends]

Looks like he’s ready to show us his best moves! Let’s make some room!

[Dice clatter. Excited, circus-like music begins]

Astragalos the Acrobat: Woohoo! Are you ready for this? Back handspring.

[Spring boing]

Front flip.

[Spring board]

And—dun dun dun dun—cartwheel.

[Slide whistle]

Wee!

[Music ends]

Phew...Gotta stay limber with all the twists and turns I do! Did that look cool?

Child: No one can see you.

Astragalos: Oh, what?

Child: It’s a podcast!

Astragalos: A podcast? Oh, yeah! I forgot you can’t see me. Sorry. Well...It DID look cool! Can you picture it?

Let me set the scene.

[Ambient string and drum music begins]

Imagine a small, clear-ish glass object about as long as a penny. You probably have dice that are perfect cubes, but I’m more rectangular, with two short faces and four long faces.

And all of my sides are unique! Of my four long faces, two are wider and two are slimmer. One of my wide sides curves out and the other curves in. One of my two skinny sides curves in, too, but then my other skinny side is mostly flat!

[Music ends]

Is that description making your mind your mind do somersaults yet?

[Slide whistle]

I know it’s kind of strange sounding, to imagine me with so many sides and all of them different. But since each of my faces is so different from the others, people didn’t need to mark little dots on each one to give it a number. They just knew which shaped side meant which number.

I’m a unique type of astragalos. Most are made from sheep or goat knucklebones.

[Sheep]

Which makes sense because “astragalos” means “knucklebone!”

[Kid saying “whoa!”]

That’s right—kids were using bones in their games!

[Kid saying “ew”]

But I’m extra special because I’m made of molded glass to look like knucklebones. Other prized types of knucklebones have been made from metals, [clang] marble, [rock breaking] wood, [logs dropping] terracotta, [pot breaking] and even precious gems. [crowd saying “oooh”]

I’m more than just dice. There are lots of games you play with knucklebones! Like have you ever grabbed a waste paper basket and tried to shoot some hoops with a balled up piece of paper?

[Sports announcer saying “she scores!”]

Well, next time you can try tossing your knucklebones into the opening of a jar like Ancient Roman kids!

[Tinkling glass]

Or let’s play marbles!

[Marbles shaking in a bag]

But instead of seeing if you can knock your opponent’s marbles out of the ring, see if you can knock out their knucklebones! And! If you’ve got a real acrobat, such as yours truly, you can toss your knucklebones up in the air and try to catch us on the back of your hands, like jacks! That’s my favorite. I love twisting and turning in the air.

[Olympic music begins]

Pretty soon I’ll nail “The Biles,” like Simone! I’ve only been practicing for, like, two thousand years.

[Music ends]

All the best games can be played with knucklebones! But we have one more skill, too: predicting the future.

[Mystical sound]

I’m actually very good at predicting the future.

[Mystical music begins]

Well, at predicting certain things. I’ll show you! Can you find a six-sided die to look at? Maybe you’ve got one in a Parcheesi box or a game of Yahtzee. I bet you that no matter what side you look at, I can predict the number of dots on the opposite side!

[Crowd murmuring]

Are you ready? Here goes! Are you looking at the side with three dots?

Well, then the opposite side will have…four dots!

How about the side with five dots? Then the opposite side has to be...two!

And that just leaves six and one as the final pair.

[Applause and voice says “wow”]

Thank you, thank you. Want to know the trick? It’s because the opposite sides of the dice always add up to seven! And it’s the same when you play with knucklebones. Each side has a numeric value, and opposite sides add up to seven.

There is one big difference between how you play with me and modern dice though. With me, it’s not the side that’s face up that matters, it’s the one touching the table! Try using that rule the next time things go south in Monopoly.

[Astragalos laughs. Sound of cash register.]

Oh, I’ve competed in thousands of great games. All of them fun, but there’s one in particular that I’ll always remember. A real nail-biter, where everything came down to the final toss. It all started with this kid named Nikandros, who lived in the Roman empire with his family. And I mean, his whole family.

[People chatting in the background]

Not just his mom and dad and siblings, but also his grandmother and some aunts and uncles, and a whole crew of cousins. Anyway, every year, in the late summer, when bees had filled their hives to the brim, honey was harvested.

[The sound of birds and buzzing bees.]

And each year during honey harvest season, Nikandros’ grandmother would make the most delicious pancake drizzled in golden honey.

Mmmh! But there was a catch. She only made one honeycake. To decide who got it, the cousins would hold an epic knucklebones tournament.

[Epic music begins]

Talk about going for gold!

[People saying “mmmmm”]

Three years in a row, Nikandros’s big bully of a cousin Straton won. And he ate the honeycake in front of everyone, without sharing a single bite!

[Crowd booing]

Nikandros was determined that this was going to be his year, so he worked on his skills all summer, but as the tournament approached, he still wasn’t sure if he could beat Straton.

[Music ends]

So, Nikandros asked his oldest cousin, Cassandra, for help. Cassandra was almost all grown up and didn’t play in the cousins’ tournament anymore, but back in the day, ahhh, she’d been a champion. When Nikandros came to her for help, she pulled out her own very special set of lucky knucklebones for him to borrow. Four beautiful pieces, all made of glass, including, you guessed it, me!

[Applause and triumphant music]

I couldn’t wait to get back in the ring! Is there anything more fun than twisting and turning and jumping in the air on the last days of summer? At first, I was sure this was going to be a cinch. But Straton was good.

[Horn]

Very good.

[Horn]

Maybe even...too good.

[Horn, crowd wondering]

Let me back up for a second and explain the rules of the game.

[Drum music begins]

In the cousins’ tournament, the goal was to throw your four knucklebones so that each one landed on a different side—this was called a “Venus Throw.” So Nikandros and Straton both made it to the final round when Nikandros noticed something...suspicious.

[Music ends]

Even a good player has some bad throws, but Straton was throwing the exact same hand over and over and over!

[Suspenseful music begins]

When Nikandros pointed this out, Straton said he was just being a sore loser. It took a lot of courage, but Nikandros stood his ground. He called Cassandra over to inspect Straton’s knucklebones.

She looked closely...and spotted it.

[Woman gasping]

Tiny holes drilled into the bone, with little flakes of metal inside.

[Music ends]

The added weight of the metal caused the knucklebones to land the same way every time. Straton had only been winning because Straton had been cheating!

[Gasps and dramatic music]

Uch, cheating. It’s a tale as old as playing. And there’s nothing I hate more! I mean, I know that life isn’t fair, but shouldn’t games be? You’d think a guy like that would get kicked out of the tournament, but their grandmother just said, [sounds of kitchen] “it was only a game” and “stay of the kitchen, we’re busy.” Tch!

Only a game! Now, more than ever, I wanted to help Nikandros beat Straton. I wanted it so badly I was starting to get really nervous.

I hoped I wouldn’t get a case of the twisties!

[Crowd murmuring uncertainly]

[Exciting music begins]

For the final round of the tournament, Straton was forced to hand over his weighted knucklebones and play with a fair set. In their first three throws, both Straton and Nikandros had flipped their knucklebones three different ways. Then Straton flubbed the final toss!

To win, Nikandros needed to land a knucklebone on the side that curves out, the hardest side to get stable. When Nikandros picked me up, I could feel his hand shaking. Or maybe it was me, trembling. He took a deep breath. He tossed me into the air. I twisted and turned under the open sky and...

I stuck the landing like a pro! The crowd went wild!

[Triumphant music begins. Sound of excited crowd clapping]

Nikandros won—the game and the honeycake.

[Music ends]

He split the cake with Cassandra, in thanks, who suggested they share with all the cousins.

[Kids cheering]

Victory had never tasted so sweet.

[Sigh] You just don’t get games like that anymore. Unless, maybe you want to play sometime?

Host: I hope you enjoyed learning about Roman games and knucklebones.

Join us next time when an owl flies off a coin and into the studio to speak with us.

[Owl hoots]

To see photographs of the astragalos and learn the rules to some Roman games, visit our website at Getty dot edu slash podcasts.

This episode was written by Claire Hupy and produced by Zoe Goldman. Lara Woodhull voiced the astragalos. Theme music, mixing and sound design by Alexandra Kalinowski. Christopher Sprinkle is executive producer.

Special thanks to curators Ken Lapatin, Judith Barr, and Hana Sugioka as well as John and Amos McCue.

Catch you next time!