Ludus duodecim scriptorum, or XII scripta, was a tables game

Tables (board game)

Tables is a general name given to a class of board games similar to backgammon, played on a board with two rows of 12 vertical markings called "points". Players roll dice to determine the movement of pieces...

 popular during the time of the Roman Empire

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....

. The name translates as "game of twelve markings", probably referring to the three rows of 12 markings each found on most surviving boards. The game tabula

Tabula

Tabula was a board game in the tables family, and is generally thought to be the direct ancestor of modern backgammon.The earliest description of tabula is in an epigram of Byzantine Emperor Zeno , given by Agathias of Myrine , who describes a game in which Zeno goes from a strong position to a...

 is thought to be a descendant of this game, and both are similar to modern backgammon

Backgammon

Backgammon is one of the oldest board games for two players. The playing pieces are moved according to the roll of dice, and players win by removing all of their pieces from the board. There are many variants of backgammon, most of which share common traits...

.

It has been speculated that XII scripta is related to the Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

ian game senet

Senet

Senet is a board game from predynastic and ancient Egypt. The oldest hieroglyph representing a Senet game dates to around 3100 BC. The full name of the game in Egyptian was zn.t n.t ḥˁb meaning the "game of passing."- History :...

. but some consider this doubtful because, with the exception of limited superficial similarities between the appearance of the boards, and the use of dice, there is no known evidence linking the games. Another factor casting doubt on this link is that the latest known classical senet board is over half of a millennium older than the earliest known XII scripta board.

Very little information about specific gameplay has survived. The game was played using three cubic dice

Dice

A die is a small throwable object with multiple resting positions, used for generating random numbers...

, and each player had 15 pieces. A possible "beginners' board", having spaces marked with letters, has suggested a possible path for the movement of pieces.

The earliest known mention of the game is in Ovid

Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...

's Ars Amatoria

Ars Amatoria

The Ars amatoria is an instructional love elegy in three books by the Roman poet Ovid, penned around 2 CE. It claims to provide teaching in three areas of general preoccupation: how and where to find women in Rome, how to seduce them, and how to prevent others from stealing them.-Background:After...

(The Art of Love) (written between 1 BC and 8 AD).

External links

• Roman Board Games — Duodecim Scripta, with images of game boards
• Roman Board Games — The Lines of the Twelve Philosophers, which may be related to XII scripta