In Ancient Greece and in the Roman Empire, popular games included ball games ( Episkyros, Harpastum, Expulsim Ludere-a kind of handball ), dice games ( Tesserae ), knucklebones, Bear games, Tic-tac-toe ( Terni Lapilli ), Nine Men's Morris ( mola ) and various types of board games similar to checkers.
22.
There is a painting excavated from Pompeii, currently housed in the Museum of Naples, which depicts the goddesses Latona, Niobe, Asclepiodotus, astragali were given as prizes to schoolchildren, and we are reminded of Plutarch's anecdote of the youthful Alcibiades, who, when a teamster threatened to drive over some of his knucklebones that had fallen into the wagonruts, boldly threw himself in front of the advancing team.
23.
Though the collection is relatively small, it includes some especially fine pieces : a Sandro Botticelli, Madonna Adoring the Child with Five Angels; and according to Dr . Oliver Shell, Art Historian of the Baltimore Museum of Art, one of the best of Fanz Hals, Dorothea Berck Wife of Joseph Coymans, and one of the best paintings owned by the museum, Jean Baptiste Chardin, The Player of Knucklebones .
24.
He is not always portrayed as acquiescent : in the " Argonautica " of Apollonius of Rhodes, Ganymede is furious at the god Eros for having cheated him at the game of chance played with knucklebones, and Aphrodite scolds her son for " cheating a beginner . " The Augustan poet Virgil portrays the abduction with pathos : the boy's aged tutors try in vain to draw him back to Earth, and his hounds bay uselessly at the sky.
