Note 712 — Chapter X · THE SWORD IN BABYLONIA, ASSYRIA AND PERSIA, AND ANCIENT INDIA.
Reading edition
Some writers are determined to find chess amongst the Romans, and quote the Panegyric of Piso, and the game of Latrunculi. But if so, where are their chessmen? The earliest allusion in any known author is in Anna Comnena’s Alexias, when the First Crusade had done some good by mixing the Eastern and the Western worlds.