These writers having apparently satisfied themselves
that the Romans as well as the Greeks played a game with pebbles,
assume therefore that they knew not chess, but might have known
a game something like Draughts. Here in the edict, however,
Chess and Draughts are both mentioned inferring a recognized
distinction between the two. It seems reasonable to assume that
the writers would have paused and have searched a little deeper
into the nature of the sedentary games which the Romans knew
and permitted if they had seen this explicit statement. It has
never been suggested by any writer that the Romans ever left an
inkling or taste for intellectual pastimes in Britain. The name
of Agricola or that of any other Roman is not associated with
any tradition or story of the game, even Aristotle and Alexander
the Great and Indian Porus (names we find in Eastern accounts)
are names not so familiar in speculatory traditions as to chess,
though less remote, than that of Thoth the Egyptian Mercury who
Plato says invented chess "Hermes" (Asiatic M.S.) or the more
frequently mentioned Moses, and the Kings of Babylon with their
philosophers.
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