Game boards, counters, and dice are common finds at military sites. Games were popular among the wider population – the emperor Claudius was such a fan of one dice game that he wrote a book about it (it hasn’t survived) and fit a gaming board into his carriage so he could play on the move – it seems soldiers were no exception.
Roman board games
A wide range of board and dice games were played in the Roman world; they have been documented in the historical record and discovered in archaeological finds. Several were what might be thought of as the ‘classic’ games – these are the ones discussed by Roman writers, giving us more insight than we might otherwise have into the rules (although even then, the exact way that these games were played is often unclear). Games were part of the general
