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Volume I Volume II

The Gaming Table by Andrew Steinmetz

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GAMING AMONG THE ANCIENT ROMAN EMPERORS

CHAPTER IV. page 5

Caligula was reproached for having played at dice on the day of
his sister's funeral; and Domitian was blamed for gaming from
morning to night, and without excepting the festivals of the
Roman calendar; but it seems ridiculous to note such
improprieties in comparison with their habitual and atrocious
crimes.

The terrible and inexorable satirist Juvenal was the contemporary
of Domitian and ten other emperors; and the following is his
description of the vice in the gaming days of Rome:

`When was the madness of games of chance more furious? Now-a-
days, not content with carrying his purse to the gaming table,
the gamester conveys his iron chest to the play-room. It is
there that, as soon as the gaming instruments are distributed,
you witness the most terrible contests. Is it not mere madness
to lose one hundred thousand sestertii and refuse a garment to a
slave perishing with cold?'[35]

[35] Sat. I. 87.

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