The Gaming Table (v. 1) Book

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. GAMBLING AMONG THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS, PERSIANS, AND GREEKS. Concerning the ancient Egyptians we have no particular facts to detail in the matter of gambling ; but it is sufficient to determine the existence of any special vice in a nation to find that there are severe laws prohibiting and punishing its practice. Now, this testimony not only exists, but the penalty is of the utmost severity, from which may be inferred both the horror conceived of the practice by the rulers, of the Egyptians, and the strong propensity which required that severity to suppress or hold it in check. In Egypt, ' every man was easily admitted to the accusation of a gamester or dice- player ; and if the person was convicted, he was sent to work in the quarries.' Gambling was,therefore, prevalent in Egypt in the earliest times. Taylor, Ductor Dubilantium, B. iv. c. 1. That gaming with dice was a usual and fashion- ahle species of diversion at the Persian court in the times of the younger Cyrus (about 400 years before the Christian era), to go no higher, is evident from the anecdote related by some historians of those days concerning Queen Parysatis, the mother of Cyrus, who used all her art and skill in gambling to satiate her revenge, and to accomplish her bloodthirsty projects against the murderers of her favourite son. She played for the life or death of an unfortunate slave, who had only executed the commands of his master. The anecdote is as follows, as related by Plutarch, in the Life of Artaxerxes. ' There only remained for the final execution of Queen Parysatis's projects, and fully to satiate her vengeance, the punishment of the king's slave Mesabetes, who by his master's order had cut off the head and hand of the young Cyrus, who was beloved by Parysatis (their common...Read More