Page:The whole familiar colloquies of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam.djvu/342

338 FAMILIAR COLLOQUIES. is our common friend, who is no negligent observer of these things, in some of his proverbs upon the authority of the ancients, intimates some things of the play of the tali; as in the proverb, Non chius sed cous, he says, that the cous and the size were the same that the Greeks called t^TjTTjv. He relates the same in the proverb chius ad cous (adding that chius was the same with canis, the ace). That the cast of the cous was a lucky cast, but of the canis an u,nlucky one, according to the testi- mony of Persius :

Quid dexter senio ferret Scire erat in votis, damnosa canicula quantum Raderet. And likewise Propertius, Semper damnosi subsiluere canes.

And Ovid, in his second book " t de Tristibus," calls them damnosos canes.

And Martial adds, that the size by itself is a lucky cast ; but if an ace comes up with it, unlucky ; for so he speaks, Senio nee nostrum cum cane quassat ebur. And now as to Yenus's cast, as it is what happens but very seldom, so it is a very lucky throw : as Martial writes in his " Apo- phoreta " ;

Cum steterit vultu nullus tibi gratus eodem, Munera me dices ruagna me dedisse tibi.

For they played with as many tali as every one had sides ; for as to dice, they us.ed to play but with three. But that which Suetonius writes of Octavius Augustus comes nearer to the method of play, reciting out of a certain epistle of his to Tiberius : At supper we played, both yesterday and to-day, like old grave men, at tali ; and as any one threw an ace or a size he laid down a piece of money for every talus, and he that threw vemis took up all. Qu. You told me before that it was a very fortunate throw when any one threw four different sides, as at dice-play the most fortunate cast is midas ; but you did not tell me that this cast was called venus. Ch. Lucian will make that matter plain to you : thus, speaking concerning Cupids, KOI /Ba ITTI tTKOTrou, juaXtv. He there speaks of venus. Qu. If Theodorus is mistaken, his words only make mention of two sides. Ch. It may be he followed the authority of some author that is out of my memory ; but I have quoted what I find in authors. For there are some that speak of the stesichorian number as to the tali, which they take to be the number eight ; and also of the euripidian, which contained forty. Qu. But it remains that you lay down the rules of the play.

Ch. I am not of the opinion that boys made use of the same rule that Octaviiis writes he observed. Nor is it probable that this game which he speaks of was a common one ; if that had been so, it had been enough for him to have said, After supper we played at the tali. But he seems by this to hint that it was a new method that they had