Heads and tails was also popular and was played with a shell and later on during the roman period with a coin, as it is today. Scenes on pottery show that betting on animal fights (including chickens, birds and dogs) was also active and animals would be bred for that reason. Obviously whenever gambling exists, cheating goes hand by hand, and that was the case in ancient times too.Ĭheckers is a game that was called ‘tilia’ in ancient Greece and in the Roman era it was called the game of the 12 lines. Most ancient Greek authors and philosophers condemned gambling and they mention that at some point gambling became like a plague resulting in government measure to reduce those activities.
Even the Gods were said to have played a game or two – in Greek mythology, Zeus, Hades and Poseidon played ‘throw the dice’ in order to split the Universe between them. However in ancient Greece gamblers had the support of a couple of Gods - Hermes and Pan. People would lose fortunes in gambling, exactly in the same way that we do today. However, like the casinos of today, those places carried a bad reputation and it was considered shameful for someone to go there. Special places even existed where people passionate about gambling would go to play. Dice games, head and tails, and other games based on ‘luck’ have always been played by different groups. Thousands of years ago, rolling two sixes was called the ‘throw of Aphrodite’ and would indicate victory in a game.įrom references in Homer and other ancient texts we can find out that gambling games have been used widely in ancient Greece. Who would think that the origin of poker goes back to the Minoan civilization, more than 3,500 years ago? Nowadays, we consider that throwing a double six in a dice game is lucky and this too has its ancient origins. Gambling has been of interest to the Greeks since ancient times and it seems that we haven’t forgotten the bad habits of the past. But have you ever thought about when or how gambling first originating? The fact is that some forms of gambling have existed in virtually the same form for thousands of years.
When you talk about gambling usually your mind goes to casinos, baccarat, roulette, lottery, dice etc.