For
which reason Palamedes played it with Thersites, as Homer tells
us in the second book of the Iliad, so also did the other heroes
of the Grecian armies, as is related by Euripides in his tragedies.
Carrera 1617, published a large volume concerning the origin
of chess, in which he attempts to prove from Herodotus,
Euripides, Sophocles, Philostratus, Homer, Virgil, Aristotle,
Seneca, Plato, Ovid, Horace, Quintilian, and Martial Vida, that
Palamedes invented chess at the siege of Troy.
The Encyclopaedia or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences,
dedicated to the King in 1727, contains an account of chess, but
it is neither a well informed nor useful article beyond the
statement that Schach is originally Persian, and that Schachmat in
that language, signifies the king is dead, it vouchsafes neither
reasonable nor useful information.
The traditionary names mentioned in the article are Schatrinscha
a Persian philosopher, Palamedes, Diogenes and Pyrrhus, its
authorities, Nicod, Bochart, Scriverius, Fabricius, and Donates,
and it concludes with a sample of the stereotyped character, with
which we are so familiar of the trace of chess origin, being lost
in the remote ages of antiquity.
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