This glass marble on display at the British Museum dates to the 2nd-3rd C AD and was found at the site of Oxyrhynchus (Roman Egypt), best known for the huge collection of papyri found there in the late 19th-20th C.
Marbles have been around for millennia. Small spherical objects made of terracotta, stone and other materials have been found in different places, including the Indus Valley – see for instance this example or this one (both from 2500-1500 B.C.) – and it is likely that they have been used to play with since then, either for games that we would recognise as ‘marbles’, or as pieces for other games like Mehen in Egypt (take a look at these lovely ones at the Met dating from 3850–2300 B.C.)
In Roman times, walnuts (nux, pl. nuces) were also used in a similar way to marbles. However, there seem to be separate references to marbles, though not always using the same term. In Suetonius’ Life of Augustus, the Emperor is described as entertaining himself by playing at dice, marbles, and nuts with young boys (‘modo talis aut ocellatis nucibusque’), among other things. This has been read in different ways, but one of the interpretations is that ‘ocellati’ (i.e. marked with small eyes/dots) refers to agate or onyx marbles. I found an image taken by someone in 2004 of what is described as ‘Roman marbles at the British Museum’. The dots on these might explain the term ocellatus, although I have not been able to locate images for these specific marbles on the British Museum website. Our marble, however, does not fit this description.
Marbles came under the same umbrella as knucklebones, dice, and walnuts, the latter of which were frequently used to symbolise childhood in Roman times (see this 3rd C AD child’s sarcophagus depicting children playing with walnuts). The game of walnuts seems to have involved piling up 3 or 4 walnuts in a pyramid shape and then throwing a nut to either complete the pyramid or knock it down, and there are also references to getting a walnut into the neck of an amphora. The Romans had the saying ‘nuces relinquere’ which meant ‘to leave the walnuts behind’, referring to transitioning to adulthood. I found an interesting video explaining this expression in Latin spoken as a living language, which is lovely to hear.
Several types of ‘game boards’ have been found incised into paving slabs in different public areas of the Roman world (e.g., the Roman Forum and the Triangular Forum at Pompeii); these are known as tabulae lusoriae and were used to play a variety of games, one of which seems to have involved marbles. This particular game is referred to in Italian as ‘il gioco delle fossette’ and in French as ‘la fossette’, and consists of a series of pits into which participants had to throw their marbles. I have not been able to find out whether there was a specific name for it in Latin.
A blog curated by an Italian ‘archaeoludologist’ includes images of some of these tabulae lusoriae, including several slabs into which little pits were carved out, most likely to play this game. I also came across a great resource page run by French-speaking archaeologists that lists games played throughout history in different parts of the world, which includes la fossette among games played with marbles (you can also see a depiction of la fossette – or the game of fruit stones – in a 17th C print by Claudine Bouzonnet-Stella).
Looking into marbles was a similar experience to finding out about knucklebones games all around the world. The fact that references to la fossette also mentioned using fruit stones led me to look at other games, and soon I was looking at a ‘peach stone game’ played by the Oneida Nation. The Cherokee Nation also plays this game with peach stones, though butterbeans seem more common – it has a great deal in common with knucklebones.
As I explored the world of marbles in recent times, it was fun to find footage of the 1938 Marbles Championship in Tinsley Green, UK (which dates back to 1588 and was still being held yearly, pre-Covid), as well as a schoolmaster in the US competing against a pupil that same year – the voice and the tone of the narrator in Pathé videos from these times tends to be wonderful. The 1962 Tinsley Green Championship featured teams with fantastic names like the Teenage Twisters, the Telcon Terribles, the Johnson Jets and the Ruislip Rat-Pac – this video, alas, with no sound.
I also found a 1950s ad for a game called ‘Marble Race’, which is described as ‘a fun-packed new game for children and grown-ups alike’ and ‘the new rage at adult parties.’ Marble Race had ‘caught the fancy of the teenagers too’, apparently an entirely separate category of beings. Boy, look at ‘em go!
However, when it came to finding out more about this marble, I realised that it was impossible to know what it had been used for, and whether it had indeed been used as a marble in a sense that we would recognise. I wondered whether I should have picked a different example, but I noted that the British Museum had chosen to call it a ‘marble’ rather than a ‘game piece’ or a more cautious term. It dates to a time when toy marbles did exist, and it is, in any case, an interesting sort of design similar to some modern marbles. I am mostly taken with its dark, other-worldly palette, and the way it is made with coloured layers.
Marbles such as this one immediately bring to mind planets and celestial objects. I found other lovely cosmic ones like this 18th C painted marble from London, with some similar colours to ours, these red and white ones from a century later, or these rare ones sold in auction, made by famous marble manufacturers like Christensen Agate, Akro Agate and Peltier a century ago (the videos are for collectors, but a glimpse is enough to see the lovely little galaxies they form).
As a child, I wondered more than once whether there might be whole worlds on the surface of marbles that we can’t see, beyond the world of microscopes. It was an attractive idea, to think of planets as huge marbles and of marbles as tiny planets. I suppose I was interested in ‘what is inside the inside’, to borrow a phrase my son used a while back, and in whether the dimensions of the universe were infinite in both directions.
Of course, thinking about this now led me down all sorts of fascinating paths, and I ended up looking into the smallest possible thing in the universe (see here for an interesting overview, albeit from 2012), which in turn led me to string theory (watch a satisfying 2.5 minute explanation by theoretical physicist Brian Greene).
Shapes and patterns that recur in animate and inanimate objects are especially pleasing, and spheres are one such shape – an eyeball, the sun, a perfectly plump orange, bubbles in a river. While I was pondering this, I took a look at NASA pictures and came across this marvellous image of Europa, Jupiter’s icy moon, marble-like in appearance but also somehow organic, like capillaries or fine plant roots. Patterns that are mirrored in our own bodies and in other living things on earth seem to provide a peculiar sort of comfort, counterbalancing the awe of looking at something too large and too far away to comprehend.
I look at this marble and note that its colour combination seems to drip ‘Romanness’ or romanitas, as if these frescoes from Villa Farnesina were rolled into a tiny ball and bound together with a glug of red wine for good measure.
Something about this little planet tells me it was coveted and admired, more than once.