Playing with Batavians. Games as an educational tool for a Romano more vivere

Abstract

Recent research has underlined how games can serve as powerful tools for the creation of new social spaces, bridging different ethnic and cultural groups, both in the present and in the past. The scope of this paper is to explore whether games can offer new insights into that process of cultural co-optation that brought in contact the Roman world and the various ethnic groups that were progressively absorbed into Rome's orbit following its political and military expansion. In Roman Britannia, the presence of typically Roman game devices at sites that were occupied by the auxilia is key to understand certain aspects of the process of Romanization. These testimonies reveal how, during their years of military service, non-Roman soldiers had the opportunity to come into contact with customs and habits of the romano more vivere. Among such practices, an important role was played by game.