Five Lines () is the modern name of an ancient Greek
tables game
Tables games are a class of board game that includes backgammon and which are played on a tables board, typically with two rows of 12 vertical markings called points. Players roll dice to determine the movement of pieces. Tables games are among ...
.
Two players each move five counters on a board with five lines, with moves likely determined by the roll of a die. The winner may have been the first one to place their pieces on the central "sacred line". No complete description of the game exists, but there have been several scholarly reconstructions, including Schädler's and Kidd's.
History
Gameboards, consisting of five parallel lines with circles at the ends, have been found at many sites in ancient Greece, sometimes carved right into the floors of temples.
The earliest known examples were found in
Anagyros, Attica, and date to the 7th century BCE.
Attic vases
Pottery, due to its relative durability, comprises a large part of the archaeological record of ancient Greece, and since there is so much of it (over 100,000 painted vases are recorded in the Corpus vasorum antiquorum), it has exerted a dispr ...
dated to around 500 BCE show
Ajax
Ajax may refer to:
Greek mythology and tragedy
* Ajax the Great, a Greek mythological hero, son of King Telamon and Periboea
* Ajax the Lesser, a Greek mythological hero, son of Oileus, the king of Locris
* Ajax (play), ''Ajax'' (play), by the an ...
and
Achilles
In Greek mythology, Achilles ( ) or Achilleus () was a hero of the Trojan War who was known as being the greatest of all the Greek warriors. The central character in Homer's ''Iliad'', he was the son of the Nereids, Nereid Thetis and Peleus, ...
playing the game, with over 160 extant.
(Some sources describe the game played in this art as
polis
Polis (: poleis) means 'city' in Ancient Greek. The ancient word ''polis'' had socio-political connotations not possessed by modern usage. For example, Modern Greek πόλη (polē) is located within a (''khôra''), "country", which is a πατ ...
,
but this is likely a mistake).
The first written mention is by
Alcaeus of Mytilene
Alcaeus of Mytilene (; , ''Alkaios ho Mutilēnaios''; – BC) was a lyric poet from the Greek island of Lesbos who is credited with inventing the Alcaic stanza. He was included in the canonical list of nine lyric poets by the scholars of H ...
, around 600 BCE. Later,
Julius Pollux
Julius Pollux (, ''Ioulios Polydeukes''; fl. 2nd century) was a Greeks, Greek scholar and rhetorician from Naucratis, Ancient Egypt.Andrew Dalby, ''Food in the Ancient World: From A to Z'', p.265, Routledge, 2003
Emperor Commodus appointed him a pr ...
describes the game in ''Onomasticon'' (9.97-98).
Pollux writes: "on the five lines from either side there was a middle one called the sacred line. And moving a piece already arrived there gave rise to the proverb 'he moves the piece from the sacred line'."
Pollux does not give the game a name, but it is usually called Five Lines by scholars. At this point, the game had likely already stopped being played, since he described it as an element of history.
Gameplay
Two players each move five pieces on a board with five lines, likely counter-clockwise. The winner may have been the first one place their pieces on the central line, called the "sacred line" (sometimes also translated as "holy"). The number of lines does not appear to be strictly limited to five, although this is the most common version; when there are more lines the game is likely played with a corresponding number of pieces. The game is played with dice, though the exact method of advancing the pieces is not known.
Proverbial references to moving a piece from the sacred line occur regularly in Ancient Greek texts. Having all of one's pieces on the sacred line was the goal of the game, so only rarely would a player want to move his pieces from the line "to gain the upper hand," as mentioned, for example, by
Alcaeus
Alcaeus of Mytilene (; , ''Alkaios ho Mutilēnaios''; – BC) was a lyric poet from the Greek island of Lesbos who is credited with inventing the Alcaic stanza. He was included in the canonical list of nine lyric poets by the scholars of Hell ...
. Stephen Kidd argues that moving a piece from the holy line was a rare and aggressive move.
References
{{Tables games
Board games