It will have been already remarked that, in all these anecdotes and stories, the ordinary number of the dice is three. This appears to have been the number used in most of the common games. In our cut No. 151, taken from the illumination in a copy of Jean de Vignay’s translation of Jacobus de Cessolis (MS. Reg. 19 C. xi.), the dice-player appears to hold but two dice in his hand; but this is to be laid solely to the charge of the draughtsman’s want of skill, as the text tells us distinctly that he has three. We learn also from the text, that in the jug he holds in his right hand he carries his money, a late example of the use of earthen vessels for this purpose. Two dice were, however, sometimes used, especially in the game of hazard, which appears to have been the great gambling game of the middle ages. Chaucer, in the “Pardoneres Tale,” describes the hazardours as playing with two dice. But in the curious scene in the “Towneley Mysteries” (p. 241), a work apparently contemporary with Chaucer, the tormentors, or executioners, are introduced throwing for Christ’s unseamed garment with three dice; the winner throws fifteen points, which could only be thrown with that number of dice.
[Illustration: _No. 152. Ornamental Dice._]
It would not seem easy to give much ornamentation to the form of dice without destroying their utility, yet this has been attempted at various times, and not only in a very grotesque but in a similar manner at very distant periods. This was done by giving the die the form of a man, so doubled up, that when thrown he fell in different positions, so as to show the points uppermost, like an ordinary die. The smaller example represented in our cut No. 152 is Roman, and made of silver, and several Roman dice of the same form are known. It is singular that the same idea should have presented itself at a much later period, and, as far as we can judge, without any room for supposing that it was by imitation. Our second example, which is larger than the other, and carved in box-wood, is of German work, and apparently as old as the beginning of the sixteenth century. Both are now in the fine and extensive collection of the late lord Londesborough.
[Illustration: _No. 153. A Party at Tables._]