Article
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Playing “Pythagoras” in Padua and Florence: a Sixteenth-Century Rithmomachia manuscript at the University of Pennsylvania
Ann E. MOYER
Published in Games from Antiquity to Baroque
Keywords: Florence, History of Education, History of Mathematics, Padua, Pythagoreanism, Rithmomachia, Universities.
A manuscript in the Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries (UPenn LJS 232) contains a manual for the medieval game rithmomachia by Carlo di Ruberto Strozzi, preceded by a brief treatise on proportion by Benedetto Varchi, both in vernacular; they were inspired by the Latin publication of Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples. An examination of the treatise and the circle of learned Florentines involved in its production offer an example both of the ways that the game spread in European university cultures, and the limits of interest in the Boethian mathematics of proportion that the game was intended to exercise.
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A kind of joy: the Wise King games
Braulio VÁZQUEZ CAMPOS
Original title: Manera de alegría: los juegos del Rey Sabio
Published in Games from Antiquity to Baroque
Keywords: Alfonso X the Wise, Astrology, Astronomy, Backgammon, Chess, Dice, Game, Middle Ages, Philosophy, Political thought, Worldview.
The «Book of Games» is one of the most luxurious works to have emerged from the scriptorium in the service of King Alfonso X the Wise, but it is also one of the most content rich. It constitutes the foremost evidence of the board games played in the Castilian court in the 13th century, especially chess, backgammon, and dice. Its pages not only encompass explanations of the mechanics and strategy of these recreational activities, but also display an entire world view through allegories, metaphors, philosophical discussions, and political interpretations. This paper endeavours to dissect each of these aspects.
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Tracing the Origins of Checkmate Patterns and Paths in Alfonso X’s Libro de los juegos
Sonja MUSSER GOLLADAY
Published in Games from Antiquity to Baroque
Keywords: Alfonso X the Wise, Checkmate Pattern, Chess, Libro de los juegos, Libro del acedrex, Retrograde Problem Analysis, Shatranj.
The present study interrogates Alfonso X’s bibliographic sources through his chess problems’ checkmates and move patterns.
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Astragalomanteion, Sortes Sanctorum, Sortes Monacenses: stratification of gaming practices and cultural traditions from Early Antiquity to the Middle Ages
Marco TIBALDINI
Published in Games from Antiquity to Baroque
Keywords: Ancient divinatio, Astragalomanteia, Astragals, Casting lots, Dice, Homeromanteia, Knucklebones, Lots, Medieval divination, Oracle, Sortes Monacenses, Sortes Sanctorum.
This paper analyses the complex relation between board games and divination, and the role those randomizing elements like dice and knucklebones played in it. It presents several literary quotations that show how the tradition of casting lots to take important decisions was diffused. It includes pieces of Sumerian and Akkadian, Hebrew, Greek and Latin literature referred to lots, and especially those related to the use of knucklebones and dice. It also outlines the stratification of divinatory practices based on gaming tools since the antiquity to the late Middle Age. It analyses the Astragalomanteia and Homeromanteia, and their points of contact with the Sortes Sanctorum and the Sortes Monacenses.
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The World of Dionysus. Visions of bodies in fun in Classical Greece
Manuel ÁLVAREZ JUNCO
Original title: El mundo de Dioniso. Visiones de los cuerpos en diversión en la Grecia Clásica
Published in Rhythms, expressions and representations of the body
Keywords: Dionysus, Festivities, Satyrs, Symposiums, Visual insight.
The figure of the mythical Greek god Dionysus presided over the most playful aspects of classical Hellenic society, whether they were parties, banquets, comedies, or celebrations in general. The visualizations of the scenes of the divinity of wine and orgy, accompanied by his crazy cohort of satyrs and maenads, show the burlesque, critical and comic sense of a culture that laid the foundations of the West. Something as contemporary as today’s graphic humor finds images of its remote origins through the splendid figurative ceramics of the classical Greek period dedicated to this god. This article shows and analyzes some examples of that visual world where the festive, the comic and the conceptually ingenious provide the unveiling of the transgressive universe of Greek society.
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Ancient Medicine and the body’s perception in Hippocrates (c. 460-370 BC)
Hélio Angotti Neto
Original title: A Medicina Antiga e a percepção do corpo em Hipócrates (c. 460-370 a. C.)
Published in Rhythms, expressions and representations of the body
Keywords: Galen, Hippocrates, History of Medicine, Human Body, Nature of Man.
Hippocratic medicine addresses the human body and its phenomena based on principles like the complexity and the balance of its components among themselves and its relations towards the nature. By means of logical formulations based on the composition of the human body by humors (blood, phlegm, yellow bile and dark bile) and, consequently, principles (heat, cold, dry and humid), the Hippocratic author seeks an explanation of phenomena such as epidemic diseases and nutritional disorders. Although the text is anachronistic, according to the current scientific perspective, there are epistemological principles obtained through contemplative science and empiricism that still have some value in relation to medical epistemology concerning human body comprehension.
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The right of life and death in war in De iure belli libri tres (1598) by Alberico Gentili (1552-1608)
Giuliano MARCHETTO
Original title: Il diritto di vita e di morte in guerra nel De iure belli libri tres (1598) di Alberico Gentili (1552-1608)
Published in The World of Tradition
Keywords: Death, Law, Life, Power, War.
In war, there are situations in which one side is given the power of life or death over the other. The medieval legal tradition tries to bring this power back into law and to limit it. The Italian jurist Alberico Gentili in his work De jure belli libri tres (1598) represents, in the modern age, the attempt to offer an interpretation of war as an instrument of justice and therefore regulated in every aspect by the law. Gentili’s theory is the opposite of a different tradition, ancient but always resurfacing in history, which instead sees war as a place from which law is absent, is silent and only violence, which includes an unlimited vitae necisque potestas, thus becomes the origin of law and of every new power and order.
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Presentation. A Comprehensive Look into the Past
Ricardo da Costa
Original title: Presentación. Una mirada comprehensiva hacia el Pasado
Published in The World of Tradition
