Zara (game)

Zara was a gambling game of the Middle Ages, played with dice for money and best known today because Dante names it in the Divine Comedy. It was most commonly played with three dice, although regional variations existed. Each player threw the dice and called out a number at the same moment. If the number called was not the sum shown on the dice, the player paid a number of coins equal to the number called. If the call matched the sum, the player collected that same number of coins. Because the result depended only on how the dice fell and on a guess at the likely total, it is a pure game of chance rather than a game of skill. The surviving account places it only in the medieval period and does not give a more exact date or region.