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The Gaming Table by Andrew Steinmetz

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GAMBLING AMONG THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS, PERSIANS, AND GREEKS

CHAPTER III. page 4

This politic monarch well knew the power of depravity in
enervating and enslaving the human mind; he therefore encouraged
profusion, dissipation, and gambling, as being sure of meeting
with little opposition from those who possessed such characters,
in his projects of ambition--as Demosthenes declared in one of
his orations.[21] Indeed, gambling had arrived at such a height
in Greece, that Aristotle scruples not to rank gamblers `with
thieves and plunderers, who for the sake of gain do not scruple
to despoil their best friends;'[22] and his pupil Alexander set a
fine upon some of his courtiers because he did not perceive they
made a sport or pastime of dice, but seemed to be employed as
in a most serious business.[23]

[21] First Olynthia. See also Athenaeus, lib. vi. 260.

[22] Ethic. Ad Nicomachum, lib. iv.

[23] Plutarch, _in Reg. et Imp. Apothegm_

The Greeks gambled not only with dice, and at their equivalent
for _Cross and Pile_, but also at cock-fighting, as will appear
in the sequel.

From a remark made by the Athenian orator Callistratus, it is
evident that desperate gambling was in vogue; he says that the
games in which the losers go on doubling their stakes resemble
ever-recurring wars, which terminate only with the extinction of
the combatants.[24]

[24] Xenophon, _Hist. Graec_. lib. VI. c. iii.

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