WG4 Seminar
Playing and calculating on lines in Ancient Greece
Véronique Dasen & Jérôme Gavin

During the monthly webinar hosted by WG4, scheduled for Monday, March 31, 2025, from 18:00 CET, Véronique Dasen and Jérôme Gavin will present a talk titled:

Playing and calculating on lines in Ancient Greece

Summary For centuries, counters and pebbles enabled the ancient Greeks to play and calculate. Paradoxically, these two common practices have left almost no written trace. We will present how a meticulous investigation of possible evidence allowed to reconstruct them. A late 5th century BC funerary altar from the necropolis of Krannon (Central Greece) provides significant information about the history of Greek numeracy. it reveals the identity of a “pebble arithmetician” and the link between the Five Lines game (Pente grammai) and abaci, suggesting a new reconstruction of the reckoning system operated on an abacus composed of five horizontal lines.

Short Biography: Véronique Dasen is prof. em. in Classical archaeology at Fribourg University and led te ERC Project Locus Ludi 2017-2023 (www.locusludi.ch). Jérôme Gavin is a mathematics professor and historian at Collège Voltaire in Geneva.

Zoom link: https://univ-nantes-fr.zoom.us/j/82265341281.