Introduction: A Snort in the Night

In the 4th century, a Roman historian who likely spent little time among the poor once disdainfully described a peculiar snorting sound that could be heard late at night in the taverns of Rome. This was not a sound of pleasure or entertainment, but rather the intense, focused inhalation of gamblers hunched over their dice games. This auditory snapshot offers one of the few immediate reconstructions of daily life in ancient Rome—a sound that would have echoed through the wine shops of Pompeii as well, where paintings from the period show patrons dining, drinking, and primarily engaged in dicing and gambling.

This vivid description opens a window into the complex relationship between leisure, risk, and social order in Roman society. From the elite villas to the common taverns, games of chance permeated all levels of Roman culture, creating tensions between pleasure and propriety, between fortune and social stability.

The Games Romans Played: From Latrunculi to Alea

We cannot know with certainty what specific games the people depicted in Pompeian paintings were playing. Like modern societies, the Romans enjoyed various board games with different names and rules. “Latrunculi” ranked among the most popular games, certainly played in Pompeii as evidenced by an election poster where a group of “latrunculi players” pledged support to a candidate—support the candidate might not have particularly wanted.

Another frequently mentioned game in Roman literature was “duodecim scripta” . No rulebooks for these games survive, leading to scholarly attempts to reconstruct their gameplay from passing references in texts. For latrunculi, players likely attempted to block or surround their opponent’s pieces, somewhat similar to modern checkers. Most of these games followed the same basic principle: players threw dice to move one or more pieces across a board toward victory. While the pure chance of the dice roll determined much of the outcome, different degrees of skill could be applied in moving the pieces.

The significance of these games was substantial enough that Emperor Claudius wrote a treatise . The emperor’s scholarly interest suggests that these were not mere childish diversions but activities with recognized strategies and cultural importance.

Wagers and Wealth: The Economics of Roman Gambling

Betting on outcomes formed an essential element of these games. Tavern games could make participants enormously wealthy or leave them destitute. One Pompeian graffito boasted of an exceptional win: “I won 855 and a half denarii playing dice in Nuceria. I’m not lying, it’s true.” This represented a substantial fortune—3,422 sesterces, nearly four times a legionary soldier’s annual salary. The writer’s repeated insistence on the truthfulness of his claim suggests that most winnings were considerably smaller.

Nevertheless, this inscription provides valuable insight into the social stratification of Pompeian tavern culture. While these gamblers might have been considered lowly and poor by local elite standards, they clearly possessed both leisure time and disposable income. Then as now, gambling was not a pastime for the truly destitute.

Legal Prohibitions and Social Hypocrisies

Roman authorities officially prohibited these games and gambling, showing more enthusiasm for regulating these activities than they did for controlling prostitution. Yet these prohibitions proved largely ineffective and were marked by obvious double standards, as these games remained popular across all social strata—as evidenced by Emperor Claudius’s own enthusiasm for dicing.

Gambling became such a characteristically Roman vice that an eccentric 1st-century BCE theorist even argued that Homer must have been Roman because he described Penelope’s suitors throwing dice in the Odyssey. This curious claim demonstrates how deeply embedded gambling was in Roman self-perception and cultural identity.

Archaeological evidence confirms the widespread popularity of gaming throughout the Roman world. While game boards have been found in many locations, none have survived from Pompeii itself, suggesting the Pompeians likely used wooden boards that decayed over time. There remains some controversy about whether objects sometimes identified as dice cups might actually have served other purposes. However, gaming pieces and dice have been found throughout the city, including in the most luxurious residences. The House of Menander, for instance, yielded several finely crafted dice and a collection of gaming pieces.

The Social Danger of Tavern Gambling

The Roman state sought not to eliminate gambling entirely, but specifically to restrict tavern-based gaming. Why this distinction? Partly because of the perceived risk to social and economic stability. In a culture that rigidly stratified members according to their wealth, the idea that someone could alter their social standing through a lucky dice throw was inevitably viewed as dangerous and subversive. From this perspective, the man who made his fortune in Nuceria was not merely fortunate but dangerously disruptive to the social order.

Recent scholarship has proposed an additional explanation: that the Roman elite’s objection to tavern gambling connected to broader cultural concerns about the proper use of leisure time . What constituted appropriate leisure? When should one engage in recreation? Were certain activities suitable only in specific contexts? Could gambling be contained within private residences rather than conducted in public taverns? These questions reflected deeper anxieties about social boundaries and cultural practices.

The Theater and the Amphitheater: Alternative Entertainments

Regardless of whether dice games were considered proper or improper, they remained popular leisure activities in Pompeii. Other forms of entertainment included theatrical performances and spectacles, which left more substantial archaeological traces than humble dice games due to their requirement for specialized venues.

Pompeii was indeed a city of theater. By 79 CE, it possessed two permanent stone theaters, though both showed varying degrees of disrepair. The larger theater dated to the 2nd century BCE and had been renovated and expanded by Marcus Holconius Rufus to accommodate nearly 5,000 spectators. Parts of the permanent stone stage setting and mechanisms for the curtain remain visible today.

Adjacent to this stood the smaller “theatrum tectum” or roofed theater, with a capacity of approximately 2,000. This structure was built by the same individuals who funded the amphitheater during the early years of Roman colonization. Interestingly, when Rome constructed its first permanent stone theater in the 50s BCE under Pompey the Great , provincial cities like Pompeii had already enjoyed such facilities for generations.

The Social Geography of Roman Leisure

The distribution of gaming evidence across Pompeii reveals fascinating patterns of social behavior. Gambling artifacts appear in both luxurious homes and humble taverns, suggesting that while the context might differ, the activity itself transcended class boundaries. The elite perhaps viewed their domestic gaming as sophisticated recreation while condemning the same activities conducted in public spaces as vulgar and dangerous.

This distinction reflects broader patterns in Roman social life, where the same activities could be deemed acceptable or unacceptable based on location, company, and social status. The Roman concept of otium was never simply about free time but always about the quality and propriety of how that time was spent.

Legacy and Modern Parallels

The Roman fascination with games of chance leaves a legacy that extends to modern times. The tension between gambling as entertainment and gambling as social problem, the distinction between private and public gaming, and the relationship between skill and chance in games all find echoes in contemporary debates about gaming and gambling.

The archaeological evidence from Pompeii and literary references from Roman authors remind us that the human attraction to games of chance is ancient and cross-cultural. The snorting gambler in the Roman tavern, intently focused on the dice, has his counterparts in modern casinos and gaming establishments. The Roman attempts to regulate gambling—with their mixed success and evident hypocrisies—likewise parallel modern regulatory approaches.

What remains particularly Roman about this story is the connection between gaming and social status, the concern about gambling’s potential to disrupt carefully maintained social hierarchies, and the elaborate cultural constructions around what constituted proper versus improper leisure. These concerns reflect the distinctive values of Roman society while simultaneously revealing universal human behaviors.

The archaeological and literary evidence from the Roman world thus provides not just a window into ancient pastimes but a mirror reflecting enduring aspects of human nature—our attraction to risk, our desire for recreation, and our perpetual negotiation between pleasure and propriety.

Conclusion: Dice, Society, and Human Nature

The story of Roman gambling reveals a society grappling with questions that remain relevant today: How do we balance pleasure and responsibility? How do we maintain social order while allowing for individual freedom? How do different social classes negotiate shared cultural practices?

The snorting gambler in the Roman tavern, the elite enthusiast like Claudius writing treatises on dice, the boastful winner in Nuceria, and the authorities trying to regulate it all represent different facets of the human relationship with chance and risk. The archaeological evidence from Pompeii, particularly the widespread distribution of gaming pieces and dice, confirms that despite official disapproval, games of chance formed an integral part of Roman daily life across social boundaries.

What makes the Roman experience particularly instructive is how it reveals the social construction of gambling—how the same activity could be framed as sophisticated pastime or dangerous vice depending on context. This social flexibility around gaming suggests that our modern categories of “acceptable” and “unacceptable” gambling may be similarly shaped by cultural assumptions rather than inherent qualities of the activities themselves.

The Roman experience with gambling ultimately reminds us that games of chance have always been about more than just winning and losing—they have served as arenas for negotiating social relationships, testing boundaries, and exploring the tension between fortune and merit. From the taverns of Pompeii to modern casinos, the roll of the dice continues to captivate us, reflecting enduring aspects of the human experience across centuries and cultures.