From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Roman girl at play (
ludus
) with
knucklebones
Gaming table for
ludus duodecim scriptorum
Ludus
(plural
ludi
) in ancient Rome could refer to a primary school, a board game, or a gladiator training school. The various meanings of the
Latin
word are all within the
semantic field
of "play, game, sport, training" (see also
ludic
).
[1]
An
elementary
or
primary school
or the school of the “litterator" attended by boys and girls up to the age of 11 was a
ludus
.
Ludi
were to be found throughout the city, and were run by a
ludi magister
(
schoolmaster
) who was often an educated
slave
or
freedman
. School started around six o'clock each morning and finished just after midday. Students were taught math, reading, writing, poetry, geometry and sometimes rhetoric.
The word
ludus
also referred to a training school for gladiators; see
Gladiator: Schools and training
. Examples include the
Ludus Magnus
and
Ludus Dacicus
.
Ludus
was also the word for a board game, examples of which include
ludus latrunculorum
and
ludus duodecim scriptorum
, or a game played with
knucklebones
(
astragali
).
Latin poetry often explores the concept of
ludus
as playfulness, both in the writing of poetry as a kind of play and as a field for erotic role-playing.
[2]
"Poetic play (
ludus
,
ludere
,
iocum
, etc.),"
Michele Lowrie
observes, "denotes two related things: stylistic elegance of the
Alexandrian variety
and erotic poetry."
[3]
Ludi
, always plural, were the games held in conjunction with
Roman religious festivals
.
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Oxford Latin Dictionary
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982, 1985 reprint), pp. 1048?1049.
- ^
Thomas N. Habinek
,
The World of Roman Song: From Ritualized Speech to Social Order
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), pp. 5, 143,
et passim
.
- ^
Michele Lowrie,
Horace's Narrative Odes
(Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 41.
