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Documents about Plato
It Is Time to Stop Painting: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as a Dilemma of Pleasant Fictionality
This paper, presented at DiGRA 2026, argues that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 uses its narrative to explore the question of authenticity in fictional experience.
- The paper argues that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's plot, in which characters discover their world is a painting made by the Dessandre family, stages a confrontation between existentialist authenticity (voiced by Verso, rooted in lived being-in-the-world) and absurdist authenticity (voiced by Maelle, where authenticity is created rather than discovered).
- The final choice between these characters places the question of the fictional world's authenticity in the player's hands.
- The author introduces the "pleasant fictionality dilemma": if players regard their game experience as authentic they take on moral and ontological obligations toward fictional characters, but if they regard it as fake, their pleasure becomes questionable.
Plato Plays Polis
"Plato Plays Polis" argues that the pun Socrates makes at Republic 422e, likening the multiple cities under discussion to the ancient counter game polis, is both philosophically apt and historically grounded.
- Plato's pun at Republic 422e compares the cities under discussion to the ancient counting game polis, and the article argues this is both philosophically apt and historically grounded.
- Philosophically, the guardians of Callipolis resemble the identical, interchangeable pessoi pieces of the game, and the dialogue links learning polis to philosophical education.
- Historically, the Republic's setting recapitulates the Athenian civil war of 403 BC, with Socrates' route to the Piraeus retracing the movements of Thrasybulus and Critias, making polis a game played for the city itself.
Back to the Game: Reframing Play and Games in Context
This introductory volume to the Board Game Studies Journal assembles papers originating from the 21st International Society for Board Game Studies conference, held in Athens in April 2018, and from the ERC-funded Locus Ludi project on play and games in Classical Antiquity.
- The volume's central argument is that gaming objects such as dice, counters, and carved stone boards can only be understood within their archaeological, funerary, sacred, and cultural contexts, since identical artefacts may serve ludic, ritual, educational, or symbolic functions depending on where they are found.
- Its archaeological section identifies multifunctionality of objects and the blurred boundary between games and religious practice as recurring methodological problems in interpreting game evidence.
- Several pavement designs in Athens long presumed to be game boards may date no earlier than Late Antiquity, which prompts reconsideration of earlier chronologies.
Pente Grammai and the 'Holy Line'
The ancient Greek board game pente grammai, and the proverbial phrase "moving from the holy line," form the subject of this study, which argues that the phrase describes a deliberate and often unusual move, typically an aggressive gamble, rather than an ordinary advance toward the goal.
- The study argues that the proverbial phrase "moving from the holy line" describes a deliberate, often unusual and aggressive gamble in the ancient Greek board game pente grammai, rather than an ordinary advance toward the goal.
- Its central method privileges archaic and classical sources (Alcaeus, Epicharmus, Sophron, Plato's Laws) over later lexicographic and commentary traditions, which the author finds frequently contradictory.
- Later authorities diverge on the board: Pollux (second century CE) places the holy line in the middle of the board, while Eustathius (twelfth century) holds that the goal is to reach that line last, a claim the author admits cannot be proven but finds consistent with archaeological evidence of five-lined boards.