Rolling Dice for Divination, Gambling and Homeromanteia

Costanza Salvatore

doi:10.2478/bgs-2022-0015

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Rolling Dice for Divination, Gambling and Homeromanteia

Board Game Studies Journal

Volume 16 (2022): Issue 1 (April 2022)

By: Costanza Salvatore

Open Access

|Apr 2022

Abstract

Everyday tools such as dice and knucklebones are associated with gambling and divinatory books founded upon the use of Homeric epics. Papyrological documents about this practice date back to Roman Imperial times. Verses drawn from Iliad and Odyssey were currently assigned to a divinely inspired wisdom. The preface to Homeromanteia shows a link with religious and divinatory ideas current at that time (hilastic invocations, hemeromancy, cledonism).

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