Editorial note — Chapter I · OF THE ORIGIN AND NAME OF CARDS

The word used by Homer, ρεσσοι,—which properly means the pebbles or pieces employed in the game,—is here translated tables; a term, which having now become nearly obsolete as signifying draughts, may be used to denote an ancient cognate game.

It might be plausibly urged by a commentator fond of discovering Homer's covert meanings, that the poet intended to censure the games of Astragalismus and Petteia,—the former as a cause of strife, and the latter as a fitting amusement for idle and dissipated persons, like the suitors of Penelope. In the twenty-third book of the Iliad, v. 87, Patroclus is represented as having killed, when a boy, though unintentionally, a companion with whom he had quarrelled when playing at Astragali or Tali: