University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.
GAMBLING AMONG THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS, PERSIANS, AND GREEKS.

CONCERNING the ancient Egyptians we have no particular facts to detail in the matter of gambling; but it is sufficient to determine the existence of any special vice in a nation to find that there are severe laws prohibiting and punishing its practice. Now, this testimony not only exists, but the penalty is of the utmost severity, from which may be inferred both the horror conceived of the practice by the rulers of the Egyptians, and the strong propensity which required that severity to suppress or hold it in check. In Egypt, `every man was easily admitted to the accusation of a gamester or dice-player; and if the person was convicted, he was sent to work in the quarries.'[19] Gambling was,

therefore, prevalent in Egypt in the earliest times.

That gaming with dice was a usual and fashionable species of diversion at the Persian court in the times of the younger Cyrus (about 400 years before the Christian era), to go no higher, is evident from the anecdote related by some historians of those days concerning Queen Parysatis, the mother of Cyrus, who used all her art and skill in gambling to satiate her revenge, and to accomplish her bloodthirsty projects against the murderers of her favourite son. She played for the life or death of an unfortunate slave, who had only executed the com-mands of his master. The anecdote is as follows, as related by Plutarch, in the Life of Artaxerxes.

`There only remained for the final execution of Queen Parysatis's projects, and fully to satiate her vengeance, the punishment of the king's slave Mesabetes, who by his master's order had cut off the head and hand of the young Cyrus, who was beloved by Parysatis (their common mother) above Artaxerxes, his elder brother and the reigning monarch. But as there was nothing to take hold of in his conduct, the queen laid this snare for him. She was a woman of good address, had abundance of wit, and *excelled at playing a certain game with dice.

She had been apparently reconciled to the king after the death of Cyrus, and was present at all his parties of pleasure and gambling. One day, seeing the king totally unemployed, she proposed playing with him for a thousand darics (about £500), to which he readily consented. She suffered him to win, and paid down the money. But, affecting regret and vexation, she pressed him to begin again, and to play with her — *for a slave. The king, who suspected nothing, complied, and the stipulation was that the winner was to choose the slave.

`The queen was now all attention to the game, and made use of her utmost skill and address, which as easily procured her victory, as her studied neglect before had caused her defeat. She won — and chose Mesabetes — the slayer of her son — who, being delivered into her hands, was put to the most cruel tortures and to death by her command.

`When the king would have interfered, she only replied with a smile of contempt — “Surely you must be a great loser, to be so much out of temper for giving up a decrepit old slave, when I, who lost a thousand good darics, and paid them down on the spot, do not say a word, and am satisfied.&” '

Thus early were dice made subservient to the

purposes of cruelty and murder. The modern Persians, being Mohammedans, are restrained from the open practice of gambling. Yet evasions are contrived in favour of games in the tables, which, as they are only liable to chance on the `throw of the dice,' but totally dependent on the `skill' in `the management of the game,' cannot (they argue) be meant to be prohibited by their prophet any more than chess, which is universally allowed to his followers; and, moreover, to evade the difficulty of being forbidden to play for money, they make an alms of their winnings, distributing them to the poor. This may be done by the more scrupulous; but no doubt there are numbers whose consciences do not prevent the disposal of their gambling profits nearer home. All excess of gaming, however, is absolutely prohibited in Persia; and any place wherein it is much exercised is called `a habitation of corrupted carcases or carrion house.'[20]

In ancient Greece gambling prevailed to a vast extent. Of this there can be no doubt whatever; and it is equally certain that it had an influence, together with other modes of dissipation and corrup

tion, towards subjugating its civil liberties to the power of Macedon.

So shamelessly were the Athenians addicted to this vice, that they forgot all public spirit in their continued habits of gaming, and entered into convivial associations, or formed `clubs,' for the purposes of dicing, at the very time when Philip of Macedon was making one grand `throw' for their liberties at the Battle of Chæronea.

This politic monarch well knew the power of depravity in enervating and enslaving the human mind; he therefore encouraged profusion, dissipation, and gambling, as being sure of meeting with little opposition from those who possessed such characters, in his projects of ambition — as Demosthenes declared in one of his orations.[21] Indeed, gambling had arrived at such a height in Greece, that Aristotle scruples not to rank gamblers `with thieves and plunderers, who for the sake of gain do not scruple to despoil their best friends;'[22] and his pupil Alexander set a fine upon some of his courtiers because he did not perceive they made a

sport or pastime of dice, but seemed to be employed as in a most serious business.[23]

The Greeks gambled not only with dice, and at their equivalent for Cross and Pile, but also at cock-fighting, as will appear in the sequel.

From a remark made by the Athenian orator Callistratus, it is evident that desperate gambling was in vogue; he says that the games in which the losers go on doubling their stakes resemble ever-recurring wars, which terminate only with the extinction of the combatants.[24]