Announcer: This is a Getty Podcast.
Host: Let the good times roll, because today we hear
from an ancient kind of dice!
Welcome to If Objects Could Talk, a podcast where art
and artifacts get to leave the museum vault and share
their side of the story.
Thanks for joining us as we bring objects into the light!
What kinds of games do you like to play?
Any favorite board games?
Maybe something with dice?
Kids just like you have been playing games for, well, for as
long as there have been kids!
In ancient times, a lot of those games were played with dice,
just like many modern games.
But Roman kids used a special type of die they
called an astragalos, which means knucklebones—because
they were made from the knucklebones of sheep or pigs!
Today’s guest is a special glass astragalos and for the
last 2000 years, since he was made, this acrobatic die
has been a champion of fun.
Looks like he’s ready to show us his best moves!
Let’s make some room!
Astragalos the Acrobat: Woohoo!
Are you ready for this?
Back handspring.
Wow!
Front flip.
And— dun dun dun dun! —cartwheel!
Wee!
Phew...Gotta stay limber with all the twists and turns I do!
Did that look cool?
Child: No one can see you.
Astragalos: Oh, what?
Child: It’s a podcast!
Astragalos: A podcast?
Oh, yeah!
I forgot you can’t see me.
Sorry.
Well...It DID look cool!
Can you picture it?
Let me set the scene.
Imagine a small, clear-ish glass object about as long as a penny.
You probably have dice that are perfect cubes, but I’m more
rectangular, with two short faces and four long faces.
And all of my sides are unique!
Of my four long faces, two are wider and two are slimmer.
One of my wide sides curves out and the other curves in.
One of my two skinny sides curves in, too,
but then my other skinny side is mostly flat!
Is that description making your mind your
mind do somersaults yet?
I know it’s kind of strange sounding, to imagine me
with so many sides and all of them different.
But since each of my faces is so different from the
others, people didn’t need to mark little dots on each
one to give it a number.
They just knew which shaped side meant which number.
I’m a unique type of astragalos.
Most are made from sheep or goat knucklebones.
Which makes sense because “astragalos”
means “knucklebone!”
That’s right—kids were using bones in their games!
But I’m extra special because I’m made of molded glass
to look like knucklebones.
Other prized types of knucklebones have
been made from metals, marble, wood, terracotta,
and even precious gems.
I’m
more than just dice.
There are lots of games you play with knucklebones!
Like have you ever grabbed a waste paper basket and tried
to shoot some hoops with a balled up piece of paper?
Well, next time you can try tossing your knucklebones
into the opening of a jar like Ancient Roman kids!
Or let’s play marbles!
But instead of seeing if you can knock your opponent’s marbles
out of the ring, see if you can knock out their knucklebones!
And!
If you’ve got a real acrobat, such as yours truly, you can
toss your knucklebones up in the air and try to catch us on the
back of your hands, like jacks!
That’s my favorite.
I love twisting and turning in the air.
Pretty soon I’ll nail “The Biles,” like Simone! I’ve
only been practicing for, like, two thousand years.
All the best games can be played with knucklebones!
But we have one more skill, too: predicting the future.
I’m actually very good at predicting the future.
Well, at predicting
certain things.
I’ll show you!
Can you find a six-sided die to look at?
Maybe you’ve got one in a Parcheesi box
or a game of Yahtzee.
I bet you that no matter what side you look at, I
can predict the number of dots on the opposite side!
Are you ready?
Here goes!
Are you looking at the side with three dots?
Well, then the opposite side will have…four dots!
How about the side with five dots?
Then the opposite side has to be...two!
And that just leaves six and one as the final pair.
Thank you, thank you.
Want to know the trick?
It’s because the opposite sides of the dice
always add up to seven!
And it’s the same when you play with knucklebones.
Each side has a numeric value, and opposite
sides add up to seven.
There is one big difference between how you play with
me and modern dice though.
With me, it’s not the side that’s face up that matters,
it’s the one touching the table!
Try using that rule the next time things
go south in Monopoly.
Oh, I’ve competed in thousands of great games.
All of them fun, but there’s one in particular
that I’ll always remember.
A real nail-biter, where everything came
down to the final toss.
It all started with this kid named Nikandros,
who lived in the Roman empire with his family.
And I mean, his whole family.
Not just his mom and dad and siblings, but also
his grandmother and some aunts and uncles, and a
whole crew of cousins.
Anyway, every year, in the late summer, when bees had
filled their hives to the brim, honey was harvested.
And each year during honey harvest season, Nikandros’
grandmother would make the most delicious pancake
drizzled in golden honey.
Mmmh!
But there was a catch.
She only made one honeycake.
To decide who got it, the cousins would hold an epic
knucklebones tournament.
Talk about going for gold!
Three years in a row, Nikandros’s big bully
of a cousin Straton won.
And he ate the honeycake in front of everyone, without
sharing a single bite!
Nikandros was determined that this was going to be his year,
so he worked on his skills all summer, but as the tournament
approached, he still wasn’t sure if he could beat Straton.
So,
Nikandros asked his oldest cousin, Cassandra, for help.
Cassandra was almost all grown up and didn’t play
in the cousins’ tournament anymore, but back in the day,
ahhh, she’d been a champion.
When Nikandros came to her for help, she pulled out her
own very special set of lucky knucklebones for him to borrow.
Four beautiful pieces, all made of glass, including,
you guessed it, me!
I couldn’t wait to get back in the ring!
Is there anything more fun than twisting and turning
and jumping in the air on the last days of summer?
At first, I was sure this was going to be a cinch.
But Straton was good.
Very good.
Maybe even...too good.
Let me back up for a second and explain the rules of the game.
In the cousins’ tournament, the goal was to throw your
four knucklebones so that each one landed on a different
side—this was called a “Venus Throw.” So Nikandros and
Straton both made it to the final round when Nikandros
noticed something...suspicious.
Even a good player has some bad throws, but Straton
was throwing the exact same hand over and over and over!
When Nikandros pointed this out, Straton said he was
just being a sore loser.
It took a lot of courage, but Nikandros stood his ground.
He called Cassandra over to inspect Straton’s knucklebones.
She looked closely...and spotted it.
Tiny holes drilled into the bone, with little
flakes of metal inside.
The added weight of the metal caused the knucklebones to
land the same way every time.
Straton had only been winning because Straton
had been cheating!
Uch,
cheating.
It’s a tale as old as playing.
And there’s nothing I hate more!
I mean, I know that life isn’t fair, but shouldn’t games be?
You’d think a guy like that would get kicked out of
the tournament, but their grandmother just said, “it
was only a game” and “stay of the kitchen, we’re busy.” Tch!
Only a game!
Now, more than ever, I wanted to help Nikandros beat Straton.
I wanted it so badly I was starting to get really nervous.
I hoped I wouldn’t get a case of the twisties!
For the final round of the tournament, Straton
was forced to hand over his weighted knucklebones
and play with a fair set.
In their first three throws, both Straton and Nikandros
had flipped their knucklebones three different ways.
Then Straton flubbed the final toss!
To win, Nikandros needed to land a knucklebone on the
side that curves out, the hardest side to get stable.
When Nikandros picked me up, I could feel his hand shaking.
Or maybe it was me, trembling.
He took a deep breath.
He tossed me into the air.
I twisted and turned under the open
sky and...
I stuck the landing like a pro!
The crowd went wild!
Nikandros won—the game and the honeycake.
He split the cake with Cassandra, in thanks,
who suggested they share with all the cousins.
Victory had never tasted so sweet.
You just don’t get games like that anymore.
Unless, maybe you want to play sometime?
Host: I
hope you enjoyed learning about Roman games and knucklebones.
Join us next time when an owl flies off a coin and into
the studio to speak with us.
To see photographs of the astragalos and learn the
rules to some Roman games, visit our website at Getty
dot edu slash podcasts.
This episode was written by Claire Hupy and
produced by Zoe Goldman.
Lara Woodhull voiced the astragalos.
Theme music, mixing and sound design by Alexandra Kalinowski.
Christopher Sprinkle is executive producer.
Special thanks to curators Ken Lapatin, Judith Barr,
and Hana Sugioka as well as John and Amos McCue.
Catch you next time!