Isthmian Games

“ It was universally adopted, not only by the Greeks, but by many of the neighbouring countries, though still the Pythian games served as an epoch to the people of Delphi and to the Bœotians, the Nemæan games to the Argives and Arcadians, and the Isthmian to the Corinthians and the inhabitants of the Peloponnesian isthmus. To the Olympiads history is much indebted. ”

“ Both the Olympic and Pythian games were held every four years. The Nemean and Isthmian came every two years. In all four the prize was similar: the wreath of wild olive at Olympia; of mountain bay at Delphi; of parsley or of native pine at Nemea; of parsley at Corinth. We are, indeed, justified in emphasizing, until the period of decadence, the absence of professionalism. The athlete, after undergoing the severest training, contested, with no degradation of gate-money, merely to win the honour of a simple wreath. ”

“ Like you I write against gaming. Can I say that I am stronger than you, in more critical circumstances?' (111)
(111) La Passion du Jeu.
What, then, is that mania which can be overcome neither by the love of glory nor the study of wisdom!
The literary men of Greece and Rome rarely played any games but those of skill, such as tennis, backgammon, and chess; and even in these it was considered 'indecent' to appear too skilful. Cicero stigmatizes two of his contemporaries for taking too great a delight in such games, on account of their skill in playing them. ”

“ Gaming in England became rather a science than an amusement of social intercourse. The 'doctrine of chances' was studied with an assiduity that would have done honour to better subjects; and calculations were made on arithmetical and geometrical principles, to determine the degrees of probability attendant on games of mixed skill and chance, or even on the fortuitous throws of dice. ”

“ Still it seems that gaming had not then confounded all conditions, as at a later period. It is evident, from the history and memoirs of the times, that the people were more given to games of skill and exercise than games of chance. Before the introduction of the arquebus and gunpowder, they applied themselves to the practice of archery, and in all times they played at quoits, ninepins, bowls, and other similar games of skill. (41)
(41) Sauval, Antiquites de Paris, ii.
The invention of cards brought about some change in the mode of amusement. ”

“ The games on the Isthmus were attended by the great dramatists Aischylos and Ion. Historians like Herodotos carried their scrolls to read before assembled Hellas. Artists came to exhibit their works of art, and perhaps to obtain new customers. Sculptors showed models of their skill, and potters exhibited vases. These games, like the Schwingfest and the shooting-matches of Switzerland, served not only as pleasant occasions of reunion, but tended to the diffusion of national ideas. ”

“ The great antiquity of the game of chess has been long since established on indisputable evidence. For its invention and earliest form the best authorities agree in looking to India, whither the simpler table-games of Egypt may have passed before the migration of the Teutonic races from Asia, and been returned from thence to Europe in their later and more complicated forms. ”

“ The winner is always anxious to barter away such slaves.
Let us now look into the Germany of to-day. In 1838, the government at Paris abolished the public salons of play, and then arose Baden, Weisbaden, Sissingern, Wilhelmbad, Koethen, Hamburg, Ems, Spa, Geneva and Monaco. The gaming season began in the spring, when the leaves were green and closed in the late autumn. The opening and closing days of the tables were like the saturnalia of the Romans. Rouge-et-noir and roulette were the games. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Againe, if Dice be wholly evill, because they wholly depend upon chance, then Tables and Cardes must needes be somewhat evill, because they somewhat depend upon chance. Therefore, consider well this reason, which condemneth the one as well as the other: Lots are not to be used in sport; but games [30] consisting in chance, as Dice, Cardes, Tables, are Lots; therefore not to be used in sport. ”

“ This fifth game will long be remembered by chess players as one of the most remarkable in the annals of chess; and appears to us conclusive, so far as regards the internal evidence derived from the games themselves, that the superiority, in point of play, lay with the Edinburgh Club, and that their winning the match was not a mere accident. ”

“ To be successful in throwing the dice is one of the most fickle achievements of fickle fortune; and therefore the principal game played with them is very properly and emphatically called 'Hazard.' It requires, indeed, some exertion of the mental powers, of memory, at least, and a turn for such diversions, to play well many games at cards. ”

“ The game thus devised was itself called chaturanga, for when it passed into Persia it carried with it its Indian name in the form shatranj, still retained there, though lost by other nations who received the game from Persia, and named it from the Persian name of the principal piece, the shah, or king, whence schach, eschecs, chess. According to this simple theory, which seems to have the best evidence, chess is a late and high development arising out of the ancient draught-games. ”

“ However, if the players, fearing each other, merely fence in parts of the board without regard to each other’s play, a most uninteresting game results, and the Japanese call this by the contemptuous epithet “Ji dori go,” or “ground taking Go.” I have noticed that beginners in this country sometimes start to play in this way, and it is one of the many ways by which the play of a mere novice may be recognized. The best games arise when the players in their efforts to secure territory attack each other’s stones or groups of stones, and we therefore must know how a stone can be taken. ”

“ BY backgammon we usually mean one particular game played with dice and thirty draughts, on a board with twelve points on each side. But this is only one of a family of games, whose general definition is that they consist in moving pieces on a diagram, not at the player's free choice, as in draught-playing, but conformably to the throws of lots or dice. It can hardly be doubted that the set of games thus combining chance and skill are all, whether ancient or modern, the descendants of one original game. ”

“ Who, in the middle ages, could have guessed what would be its next outcome—that magic sunk into sport should rise again as science, and man's failure to divine the future should lead him to success in controlling it?
Already in the ancient world there appear mentions of games where the throws of lots or dice, perhaps at first merely scored with counters on a board, give the excitement of chance to a game which is partly a draught-game, the player being allowed to judge with which pieces he will move his allotted number. In England this group of games is represented by backgammon. ”

“ The Grub Street Journal of 28 Dec. 1733, gives a practical hint how to utilise Gambling: “Dear Bavy.—As Gaming is becoming fashionable, and the Increase of the Poor a general Complaint, I propose to have a Poor’s Box fix’d up in some convenient Place in every House, which may contain all Money that shall be won at Cards, or any other Games; and that a proper Person be appointed in every Parish to keep the Key, and to collect Weekly from each House what has been dropt into the Box, in order to distribute it among the poor, every Sunday. ”

“ Besides chess they had backgammon, or tables, as the game was called, Merelles, or Nine men's Morris (which also found its way to the shepherds' cottages) , dice, and card games, some of which I have described before. Gambling was often carried on to a great extent, but evidently our modern people are not wiser than their ancestors in this matter; and instead of playing games for recreation, are not satisfied until they [pg 113] lose fortunes on the hazard of a dice or a card. Let us hope that men will at length become wiser as the world grows older. ”

“ Were the Edinburgh Club "to blame" for not granting the favour which was asked of them? On this question we think there is quite as little doubt as the other. We have a strong and decided opinion as to the necessity of strict play in all games. It is the only fair and rational system; for once allow indulgence, and it is impossible to fix the limit at which it should stop. But we think that the remark applies with peculiar force to the game of chess, in which rigour is [103] absolutely essential to the acquisition of the habits fitted for the proper playing of the game. ”

“ The gamester of skill, in games of skill, may at first sight seem to have more advantage than the gamester of chance, in games of chance; and while cards are played merely as an amusement, there is no doubt that a recreation is more rational when it requires some degree of skill than one, like dice, totally devoid of all meaning whatever. ”

“ His father dying when he was young, the business was carried on, first by his mother, and afterwards by himself, but he soon took to betting and gambling, became a proficient at cards, and was more particularly skilled in the games of whist, piquet and cribbage; he frequented the better kind of sporting houses in the neighbourhood of St James’s market, where the latter game, more especially, was much played, and for large sums, by opulent tradesmen and others. ”

“ Chess and Go are both in a sense military games, but the military tactics that are represented in Chess are of a past age, in which the king himself entered the conflict — his fall generally meaning the loss of the battle — and in which the victory or defeat was brought about by the age of single noblemen rather than through the fighting of the common soldiers. ”

“ It is not quite easy to say whether man in a low savage state ever goes beyond these practical sports, and invents games of mere play. But higher up in civilization, such games are known from very ancient times. A trifling game, if it exactly takes hold of the playful mind, may last on in the world almost for ever. The ancient Egyptians, as their old paintings show, used to play our childish game of hot-cockles, where the blind-man who stoops down has to guess who thumped him on the back. ”

“ In the middle ages, dice, chess, and afterwards tables, and cards, with other sedentary games of chance and skill, were reckoned among the female amusements; and the ladies also frequently joined with the men in such pastimes, as we find it expressly declared in the metrical romance of Ipomydon. ”

“ When this player catches a boy, that boy joins hands with him; the next prisoner taken also joins hands, and these assist in capturing others. This is continued until all the players are caught and have joined hands in a long line, practically reverting to the line form of game, and showing, according to my theory of the line [483] game, that all joining hands are of one side or party. If the line gets broken the players can run back to their own side. There are many other games which are played in a similar way (see Contest Games) , though farther removed from the original form. ”

“ The Eastern origin of Chess is undisputed, but when and by whom it was introduced into Europe is unknown. According to Herodius, the Lydians suffered from a long and severe famine in the reign of Atys, and in order to forget their misery, invented many games, particularly dice. Previous writers attribute the invention of games of chance to the Greeks during the siege of Troy, and Cicero mentions games in the camp; but it does not follow that these games were either chess, cards, or dice. ”

“ Even with the same hands of cards the play may be almost infinitely varied, so that the complete variety of games at whist which may exist is almost incalculably great. It is in the highest degree improbable that any one game of whist was ever exactly like another, except it were intentionally so. ”

“ But when the pleasure becomes a business, and a matter of mere gain, there is more innocence, perhaps, in a perfect equality of antagonists—which games of chance, fairly played, always secure—than where one party is likely to be an overmatch for the other by his superior knowledge or ability.
Nevertheless, even games of chance may be artfully managed; and the most apparently casual throw of the dice be made subservient to the purposes of chicanery and fraud, as will be shown in the sequel. ”

“ The suggestion that it would be smart to run honest games had been implanted in the zwilniks’ minds, not because of the cards, but because of the wheels; for a loaded, braked, and magnetized wheel is a very tough device to beat.
Joan, then, would read a deck of cards, and a Lensman or a Rigellian would watch her do it. Then the observing telepath would, all imperceptibly, insert hunches into the mind of a player. And what gambler has ever questioned his hunches, especially when they pay off time after time after time? ”

“ Mead, of N.Y.,
and another strong player.
[93] Game III.—Between Mr. Anderssen and Mr. Hillel.
[94] Game IV.—Between Mr. Morphy and Mr. Marache
[95] The Two Knights' Defence.
This, like the Evans Gambit, and the Queen's Pawn Game or Scotch Gambit, is a variation merely of the Giuoco Piano; the second player, instead of moving at his 3d move, K. B. to Q. B's 4th, bringing out his K. Kt. to B's 3d.
GAME THE FIRST.
GAME THE SECOND.
[96] GAMES ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE TWO KNIGHTS' GAME.
Game I.—Between Von H. der Laza and Mr. M.
Game II.—Between two members of the Berlin Chess Club. ”