From jbutrica@morgan.ucs.mun.ca Sun Sep 3 08:57:28 2000 Received: from mxu3.u.washington.edu (mxu3.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.7]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id IAA12222 for ; Sun, 3 Sep 2000 08:57:27 -0700 Received: from cerberus.ucs.mun.ca (cerberus.ucs.mun.ca [134.153.2.162]) by mxu3.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id IAA04387 for ; Sun, 3 Sep 2000 08:57:27 -0700 Received: from [134.153.128.98] (drusus.clas.mun.ca [134.153.128.98]) by cerberus.ucs.mun.ca (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAA08061 for ; Sun, 3 Sep 2000 13:27:24 -0230 (NDT) X-Sender: jbutrica@pop.morgan.ucs.mun.ca Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <00ec01c0153e$e9107760$323570c2@laptop> References: <200008311732.NAA05782@freenet10.carleton.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 3 Sep 2000 12:32:02 +0100 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: James Butrica Subject: Re: Roman die inscription >Are there any ancient references to dice used as instruments of divination, >or were they only for games? >Ralph Hancock >hancock@dircon.co.uk You might not consider this "serious" divination, but lovers are going to use *tali* at any rate to find out which one is more in love with the other at Propertius 3.10.27-28 (sit sors et nobis talorum interprete iactu / quem grauius [Beroaldus: grauibus mss] pennis uerberet ille puer). Propertius himself at 4.8.45-46 apparently uses them to tell whether he's going to, uhm, get lucky with the two women he's invited over (me quoque per talos Venerem quaerente secundam [Palmer: the mss have secundo, which is obviously wrong, but Palmer's correction gives a nice double entendre, since Venus is the best throw but also the reason for inviting two women over and so I prefer it to secundos, which most editors adopt]. I also have a reference to divination by dice among lovers at Lucian, Amores 16, but unfortunately I do not have a text at hand to quote the content. As to lovers vs soldiers, Ovid could tell you they're all the same. James Lawrence Peter Butrica Department of Classics Memorial University St. John's, Newfoundland A1C 5S7 (709) 737-7914 .