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Game-players

This wall-painting illustrates two men sitting at a wooden table, playing a game of dice. They are watched by two other men. It is one of the 13 wall-painting s depicting popular scenes (mostly social activities that might take place in a bar) that adorned the walls of a bar on one of the main streets of Pompeii.

Gambling with dice was illegal in the Roman world, except during the Saturnalia festival, and in Roman literature it is generally frowned upon as an immoral activity associated with drinking and violent arguments. It would appear, however, from the large number of dice found at Pompeii and other Roman towns, that both the law and this moralising attitude were ignored by many inhabitants of the town.