This is usually obvious to both players after two series of repeated moves - any move initiating a third repeating series of moves is prohibited. Sequences of plays that repeat endlessly are to be avoided. If the game stalemates, the player with the most captured opponent’s piece wins. The ‘King’ is immobilised if it is blocked by an opponent’s piece such that it has no place left to move. The first player to immobilise the opponent’s ‘King’ wins. The Rex ( Dux or Aquila) cannot be captured but can be immobilised by being surrounded on all four sides. Multiple pieces can be captured along a line. The board edges cannot be used as an aid to capture pieces.Ī piece in the corner can be captured by two of the opponent’s pieces placed across the corner.
Pieces may move any number of spaces in a horizontal or vertical direction.Ī single piece is captured if surrounded on two opposite sides. Use a 12 x 8 board with the starting arrangement as shown right. The aim of the game is for each player to move their pieces so that all five eventually occupy the sacred line in the opposing player's half of the board. Only the sacred line, or the two squares opposite each other in the centre of the board, can be occupied by more than one piece at a time, and both players' pieces can occupy their side of the sacred line simultaneously.Ī player has to move if they are able to, but if they cannot, then their turn is lost.
In either case, a piece can only end its move on an unoccupied line or square. For example, if a player throws '6', then they can either move one piece six lines (or squares) or move several pieces to the total value of '6'. The opening position has one player's pieces at the end of each line on their side of the board, and the other player’s pieces are positioned opposite.Įach player takes it in turns to roll a die and moves their pieces anticlockwise around the board according to the number thrown. The points, holes or circles at both ends of the lines on some of the boards suggest that one counter only was normally placed at the ends of the lines. The number of counters used corresponded to the number of lines, each player having as many counters as lines on the board. Larger versions could have more lines, but always an odd number as there had to be a central, or 'sacred', line.įrom the written sources we learn that the aim of the game was to move all one's counters onto this 'sacred' line. The standard game was played on aboard with five parallel lines. Based on these and other written and archaeological sources, a set of rules have been developed that are in keeping with these hints.
Much later, in the 12th-century AD, Eustathios explains that ‘the beaten player goes to it last’, that is the winning player is the one who manages to move all his five pieces onto the sacred line first. As such it describes well the function of this line. The term 'sacred' may relate to the ancient Greek concepts of asylum and hiketeia, that is the inviolable right of persons in search of aid to take refuge in a sanctuary where nobody had the right to remove them by force. And moving a piece already arrived there gave rise to the proverb “he moves the piece from the sacred line” (bad luck!)’. His entry states that ‘each of the two players had five pieces upon five lines’ adding that ‘there was a middle one called the sacred line. In his Onomasticon, the 2nd-century AD lexicographer, Pollus, lists Pente grammai amongst games of chance. It is only in the Imperial Roman period that we learn more about the game.
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