as a medieval Latin name for chess. Board geometry Since, in archaeological excavations, it is usually hard to tell what game a gridded board was used for, it is hard to determine the size of the board on which latrunculi was played. R. C. Bell, writing in 1960, mentioned boards of 7×8, 8×8, and 9×10 squares as common in Roman Britain. W. J. Kowalski refers to the "Stanway Game", an archeological find of 1996 in Stanway, Essex, England, and believes the game was played on a board of 8×12 squares; the same size that was used a thousand years later for courier chess. He later allowed a board of 10×11 squares. The rules may have varied much across the width of the Roman Empire and through time. Game rule reconstructions Ulrich Schädler's reconstruction (2001) Use a normal checkerboard with 8×8 squares. The two players agree about the number of pieces, at least 16, but not more than 24 for each player. If the board is larger, then the number of pieces increases too. Use pieces such as coins or hemispheres with different sides that can be flipped. The players take turns to place one piece on any vacant square. According to Bishop Isidore of Sevilla (Origines, chapter 64; 7th century) these pieces were called vagi. In this phase no captures are made. When all the pieces have been placed, the players take turns to move pieces on the board. The pieces can be moved orthogonally to any adjacent square. Isidore called these pieces ordinarii. A piece can leap over any single piece of either color, if the square behind is unoccupied. Several leaps in one turn are possible (as in draughts). If a player can trap an enemy piece between two friendly pieces, the enemy piece is blocked and cannot be moved. Such a piece is called alligatus or, according to Isidore, incitus. To make it clear that a piece is an alligatus, it is turned upside down. In his next turn, instead of moving a piece, the player can capture the trapped piece by removing it from the board, provided his own two surrounding pieces are still free. The trapped piece is immediately free if one of its two enemies is itself surrounded. A player can move a piece between two enemies ("suicide") only if by this move one of the two is trapped. A player reduced to only