| Title: | Roman lotteries |
| Original Title: | Loteries des Romains |
| Volume and Page: | Vol. 9 (1765), p. 695 |
| Author: | Louis, chevalier de Jaucourt (biography) |
| Translator: | †Robert Kruckeberg [Troy University] |
| Subject terms: |
Roman history
|
| Original Version (ARTFL): | Link |
| Rights/Permissions: |
This text is protected by copyright and may be linked to without seeking permission. Please see http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/terms.html for information on reproduction. |
| URL: | http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0000.321 |
| Citation (MLA): | Jaucourt, Louis, chevalier de. "Roman lotteries." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Robert Kruckeberg. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2004. Web. [fill in today's date in the form 18 Apr. 2009 and remove square brackets]. <http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0000.321>. Trans. of "Loteries des Romains," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 9. Paris, 1765. |
| Citation (Chicago): | Jaucourt, Louis, chevalier de. "Roman lotteries." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Robert Kruckeberg. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0000.321 (accessed [fill in today's date in the form April 18, 2009 and remove square brackets]). Originally published as "Loteries des Romains," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 9:695 (Paris, 1765). |
Roman lotteries, in Latin pittacia , used as a plural noun by Petronius.
During the Saturnalia, the Romans thought up some types of lotteries in which all the tickets, which were distributed free to the guests, won some prize; and what was written on the tickets was called apophoreta . This invention was a gallant way of showing their liberality and of making the celebration more lively and interesting by first putting everyone in a good mood.
Augustus really enjoyed this idea; and even though he knew the lottery tickets consisted of pure trifles, they were thought up in order to give even more amusement; but Nero gave the greatest magnificence to this genre, in games that they were celebrating for the eternity of the empire. He created public lotteries of one thousand tickets a day to help the people, some of which were enough to make the fortune of people to whom chance had placed them [the tickets] between their hands.
The emperor Elagabulas enjoyed making the lotteries half of useful tickets and half of tickets which won laughable things and of no value. There was, for example, a ticket for six slaves, another for six flies, a ticket for an expensive vase, and another for a common terracotta vase, and so forth.
Finally, in 1685, Louis XIV renewed the memory of the ancient Roman lotteries: he held a very admirable one on the occasion of the marriage of his sister to M. le Duc. He established in Marly's salon four boutiques filled with the richest and most cherished goods that the industry of Parisian workers had produced. The women and men named to the trip drew lots for jewelry with which these boutiques were filled. The festival of this prince was without doubt very gallant, and superior to the type of those of the Roman emperors, and it even charmed M. de Voltaire. But what of this ingenious gallantry of the monarch, if this sumptuosness, if the magnificent pleasures of his court insulted the misery of the people, how should we look upon them?