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I recently re-watched the 1963 moving-picture show Jason and the Argonauts, one of the best cinematic retellings of a Greek myth and a movie that contains some of the finest work of master animator Ray Harryhausen. Amid the film's conceits is the image of the gods literally playing games with mortal life: Jason'south adventures are revealed to exist largely controlled by a boardgame that Zeus and Hera are playing confronting each other – Hera supports Jason in his quest, while Zeus seeks to derail the quest by placing various obstacles in their path.
The idea that the doings of human heroes, and even whole nations, are ultimately nothing more than a game between deities is ane that has been picked upward many times in 20th century fiction. Most closely echoing the picture, Tom Holt'south novel Ye Gods features the Olympians moving mortal heroes about in a Dungeons and Dragons-like run a risk game, scoring points confronting each other as their heroes slay monsters and overcome obstacles. Several of the books in Terry Pratchett'southward Discworld series besides feature human adventures as the gods' boardgame – the hapless magician Rincewind is depicted every bit the favourite playing-slice of the green-eyed goddess known only equally The Lady (worshipped principally in casinoes and past people with no other hope – don't say her proper name, or she'll desert yous). One of the eeriest versions of this trope tin be found in Roger Zelazny's brusque story The Game of Blood and Dust, in which all of human history serves as the gameboard of ii enigmatic beings known only as Claret and Dust. The trope has become a very pop i in a diversity of media, from comic books to video games, as inevitably chronicled by TVTropes.
This image is certainly a brilliant commentary on the ways in which the classical gods are shown interacting with mortals. The epitome of ane god seeking to aid a hero while another tries to hinder him – Zeus promotes his son Heracles, while his married woman Hera seeks constantly to torment him; Athena tries her all-time to bring Odysseus home, while Poseidon works to make his journey as long and painful as possible. The apex of this sort of two-way conflict can mayhap be constitute in the Iliad. The 2 sides are each favoured past a different grouping of deities – the Greeks by Athena and Hera and Poseidon, the Trojans by, amidst others, Ares, Aphrodite and Apollo – and these two teams of gods encourage whole armies of heroes to fight each other in order to satisfy their pride and resentment. The image of the divine boardgame too chimes well with the profound gulf that was seen as existing betwixt the priorities of mortals and gods in the ancient world. In the Iliad, for example, the Trojan State of war, which leads to the deaths of thousands of mortals and the destruction of an entire culture, is reflected on Olympus merely equally a family squabble amid the gods, obviously largely forgotten by the fourth dimension of the Odyssey, simply ten years afterward.
This led me to wonder whether the image of the cosmic board game is something that appears in Ancient Greek idea itself. While the Greeks and Romans did not take games quite equally sophisticated as those depicted by Holt, Pratchett, or Zelazny, they certainly did have boardgames. The Greeks played pessoi (also pronounced pettoi, literally meaning "pebbles") a game apparently something like checkers (or draughts, for those raised in the UK), which is mentioned equally early equally Homer and represented in Greek art. The Romans had a similar game chosen the ludus lactrunculum – "game of bandits", which featured white and black pieces seeking to surround each other.
References to the gods playing boardgames, notwithstanding, prove surprisingly difficult to observe. It is truthful that international diplomacy tin be likened to games – for example, in Euripides' Suppliant Women, a herald from Thebes, on hearing that the Athenians are a democracy rather than a monarchy, rejoices that "you take given the states the first move, as in pessoi; for the city I come from is not ruled past a mob, but is under a unmarried man." Likewise, in a fragment the same playwright's lost Erechtheus, the movements of tribes from territory to territory are said to resemble the moves of pieces across the gameboard (quoted in Lycurgus 1.100). Aristotle draws on a similar metaphor when, in his Politics, he likens a human being without a gild to a single slice on a gameboard – non good for much of anything on its own (Politics 1253a). But in all of these examples, the gods are conspicuously absent-minded. Mortals are both the pieces and the players,
Divinity is linked to boardgames in Plato'south Laws. In describing the actions of the benevolent creator of the universe, Pessoi is used to illustrate the mechanics of reincarnation:
Since the soul is always beingness placed in bodies, now into one, now into another, it undergoes all sorts of changes, from this life to that, and there is zippo left for the Gameplayer to do but to motion the character than becomes improve into a better place, and the ane that becomes worse into a worse one (Laws 10.903d).
While hither we practice accept a deity imagined as gameplayer, this is a very dissimilar paradigm from those presented in the modern versions of the epitome. In the modern treatments, the prototype of humans as the gods' gamepieces usually serves to indicate their indifference to humanity as they treat mortals' tribulations only a source of entertainment. In Plato's business relationship, however, the divine player is deeply attentive to humans equally individuals: the god moves the pieces not for amusement or personal reward, merely in social club to place them where they nearly deserve to be.
When we leave the beaten track of more familiar authors, even so, things begin to get a bit more interesting. The enigmatic philosopher Heraclitus is said to have declared that "eternity is a kid playing, playing boardgames" (fragment 52). The famous obscurity of Heraclitus' style, and the lack of context for this fragment brand it difficult to know exactly what it means, but information technology does seem to have the implications of arbitrariness and lack of seriousness that the modern visions of the divine boardgame imply. It is at the other end of artifact, notwithstanding, that we find the near interesting passages. Interestingly, it is Jewish and Christian writers who near encompass the paradigm of supernatural powers playing games with the earth. The first-century CE Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, for case, says that "nothing is more unstable than Fortune, who moves people like game-pieces up and down" (Life of Moses i.31). Every bit a monotheist, Philo almost certainly intends this to be taken equally a purely metaphorical depiction, but it does get us a lot closer to the image of game-playing gods. Christian writers also seem to have embraced the metaphor: Gregory of Nanzianzus writes in a letter, "let it be others that envy and time and gamble move like gamepieces (petteuetÅ) and throw near and play with," while he and his correspondent remain firm in their faith. Once again, the players hither are non gods but metaphorical personifications, simply the vision of human affairs every bit catholic boardgame is very definitely present.
These writers come closer to the modern vision, but they still lack ane crucial chemical element: that of competition. In all the examples, the metaphor of boardgames is invoked primarily to emphasize the frequent and sometimes arbitrary movement of the pieces. In none of the examples I've constitute do we always meet two gods or teams of gods playing games against each other for the fate of the world. That epitome, based, I suppose, on the mythical rivalries betwixt gods over mortal heroes or communities, seems to have been the brainchild of Beverly Cross and January Read, the scriptwriters of Jason and the Argonauts.
That is, as far every bit I know. There'south obviously an atrocious lot of time betwixt late artifact and 1963, after all, and information technology's entirely possible that the metaphor of the divine boardgame was used at least in one case in that span. Also, of course, the Greeks and Romans are far from the only civilizations who had both gods and boardgames. Information technology's quite that the image of gods using mortals every bit gamepieces may crop up in Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Aztec, or Indian mythology, just to name a few. If anyone knows, please do let me know.
While the search for its origins in artifact has proved disappointing, the epitome of gods playing games with mortal lives is clearly an effective one, and one that, given the popularity of both board and figurer strategy games, I suspect will be with usa for quite some time.
Source: https://danielbunruh.wordpress.com/2016/10/11/gods-playing-games/
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