Ludus latrunculorum

Ludus latrunculorum, the game of little soldiers or brigands, was a two player strategy board game played throughout the Roman Empire and is classified as an abstract strategy game resembling chess or draughts in its tactical character. It evolved from earlier Greek board games such as petteia and was described by Roman writers including Marcus Terentius Varro, who lived from 116 to 27 BC, with the latest surviving reference appearing centuries later in Macrobius's Saturnalia. Two players maneuvered pieces on a grid and captured an opponent's pieces by encircling them between two of their own, a mechanic fundamentally different from the direct combat of modern chess despite frequent historical comparisons between the two games.