Archaeologists Discover Ancient Tokens That Roman Soldiers Used to Play Strategy Games

Archaeologists digging in the ancient Roman city of Hadrianopolis, located near Eskipazar in modern-day Turkey, have unearthed two bone tokens dating to the fifth century C.E. that they suspect belong to a strategic board game enjoyed by Roman soldiers.

“These bone objects are lentil-shaped and disk-shaped,” Ersin Çelikbas, an archaeologist at Karabük University who leads excavations at Hadrianopolis, tells the state-run Anadolu Agency’s Orhan Kuzu. “One stone has a four-armed symbol, while the other has an eight-armed symbol.”

The markings on the tokens, which are roughly the size of a half-dollar coin, likely indicated the strategic purpose or worth of each piece during a game, according to a statement from Karabük University. Some 1,600 years ago, perhaps soldiers on the easternmost edge of the empire shuffled the slim bone tokens across a board, attempting to outwit their opponents.

Çelikbas suggests that the pieces could have belonged to a popular Roman game like Ludus Latrunculorum. Also known as Ludus Latrunculi, which translates to “Game of Mercenaries,” the two-player strategy game was the “toast of the Roman Empire,” as Smithsonian magazine’s Meilan Solly wrote in 2020. It was ubiquitous in Roman culture, with roots in the ancient Greek game of Petteia.

Ludus Latrunculi was “known for its simplicity yet deep strategic layers,” Koray Erdogan writes for Türkiye Today. While the exact rules have been lost to history, Ulrich Schädler, an archaeologist at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, suggested in a 1994 essay that players would have attempted to surround a lone piece of their opponent’s with two of their own until one side’s pieces were all captured.

Hadrianopolis’te 5. Yüzyıla Ait Oyun Taşları Bulundu: Askeri Stratejiye Dayalı Tarihi Bir Miras

The two bone pieces found at Hadrianopolis might also have belonged to Duodecim Scripta, a game comparable to backgammon played on a board with three rows of twelve squares, according to Anadolu Agency.

“These were games based on military strategy,” Çelikbas tells Anadolu Agency. He likens them to checkers or Battleship and emphasizes that they were popular among Roman soldiers.

Aristotle, referencing the Greek precursor to Ludus Latrunculi, wrote that “a citizen without a state may be compared to an isolated piece in a game of Petteia.”

“The discovery of strategy games in Hadrianopolis further solidifies the presence of a military unit here, as it is known that bone pieces were used to play ancient strategy games,” Celikbas says. He views the pieces as evidence that a previously discovered Roman fortress dating to the second century C.E. may have existed at the site into the fifth century C.E., playing a crucial defensive role for centuries.

Hadrianopolis—named for the Roman emperor Hadrian, who expanded the Anatolian settlement during his reign between 117 and 138 C.E.—has proven to be a trove of ancient wonders, including baths, churches, tombs, castles, a fountain, villas, archways and monuments, according to Türkiye Today.

Earlier this year, Çelikbas and his team found a pendant from the same era as the game pieces with an image of King Solomon and the inscribed words “Our Lord defeated evil” in ancient Greek.

These finds shed new light on Hadrianopolis’ status as an important cultural hub and strategic military outpost. Excavations are ongoing, and Çelikbas thinks that 2025 will bring “even more exciting discoveries,” per Türkiye Today.

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