A Study on the Late Antique Board Game Duodecim Scripta/Alea from Stratonikeia and Lagina

This study examines five late antique graffiti boards of the Roman game duodecim scripta, also known as alea, carved into marble surfaces at Stratonikeia and Lagina in southwestern Anatolia. Its central argument is that these casually incised games, which appear less frequently than other street-carved games such as three-in-a-row, nine men's morris, and mancala, reveal how board games remained a common social pastime in Imperial cities well into Late Antiquity, even as pagan belief declined. The authors trace the game's development from a three-row board (XII scripta) to a two-row alea or tabula form by about the 5th century AD, and they stress that this later form is a related branch of the family rather than a direct ancestor of modern backgammon.

The boards are situated within a broad distribution across Anatolia and the wider Roman world, generally dated to the 3rd through 6th centuries AD. The most distinctive example is a reused architrave from the Stratonikeia Roman Bath "Honor Hall," dated to the late 5th or 6th century, which displays a four-row arrangement rare among the usual three-row forms and paralleled only at the Didyma Apollo Temple. The authors suggest this may hint at movement toward the two-row tabula layout, though no direct archaeological evidence for tabula survives in the city. Four further boards, carved into colonnaded street paving at Stratonikeia and into the stylobate of the Lagina Hekate Temple, share a triangular central divider that differs from the X-shaped dividers at Aphrodisias and Perge, a difference the authors argue calls for revising C. Roueché's existing typology.

Because these boards are carved into immovable marble, the authors conclude they functioned as permanent floor boards. Their uniform circular game areas and consistent dividers point to a single prototype and local production, and together with a set of fourteen bronze game pieces from the Mosaic Villa, they show that game-playing was a widespread public and private activity in Late Antiquity. The study notes that such play persisted under Christian influence until roughly the 7th century AD, though precise dating of the individual boards remains difficult.