Yet if embodied mimetic practices merit consideration on their own
terms, nonetheless attention to them can broaden and enrich our under-
standing of modes of symbolization, including writing. Let us consider,
for example, Nicholas Purcell’s suggestive article ‘‘Literate Games,’’
which examines inscribed game boards (the so-calledlusoriae tabulae)
and the culture of gaming surrounding them—a set of objects, scripts, and
practices that mark the intersection of the embodied and the symbolic.^38
In his analysis of the culture of gaming, Purcell draws many plausible
inferences concerning the role of competition, windfalls, economic and
social aspirations, and so forth; but when it comes to writing, he sees the
game boards as evidence of a quasi-literary culture surrounding and
parasitical upon the practices of the truly literate and literary elites. It
seems possible to argue, however, that the influence runs in the opposite
direction; or perhaps better that the playfulness of the script on the game
boards and certain kinds of play in literary texts are manifestations of the
same underlying attitude to writing, which treats it not just as an expres-
sion of speech but also as a distinctive means of graphic communication
that entails strictures and constraints not characteristic of spoken lan-
guage. As Ken Morrison puts it in his discussion of the emergence of
modern forms of textuality, ‘‘meaning inheres as much in our patterns of
textual organization as it does in the structures of linguistic usage.’’^39 Text
and language constitute ‘‘separate but co-operative loci of meaning.’’^40
Of the many pieces of surviving material evidence pertaining to gaming
in the Roman world, a group oflusoriae tabulaeconstructed around a
pattern of six words of six letters each invites particular attention.^41 In
addition to their stereotyped arrangement (two words per line, often with
an intervening rosette or other mark), thetabulaecontain similar mes-
sages inviting the reader/user to relax, play, and so on. For example, the
pavement of the Forum at Timgad contains the inscription
Another inscription, from Trier, reads
VENARI LAVARI
LVDERE RIDERE
OCCEST VIVERE
(To hunt to bathe
To play to laugh
This is to live)^42- Purcell 1995.
- Morrison 1987, 243.
- Morrison 1987, 268.
- Twenty one such tablets are recorded in the slightly differing collections of Lamer
1927, Austin 1934 and 1935, Ferrua 1946, and Purcell 1995. For full bibliography see
Purcell 1995, 18. Ferrua includes several inscriptions too fragmentary to determine for
certain if they follow the three by twelve pattern. - Purcell 1995, 24.
Situating Literacy at Rome 125