The simple throwing of the dice was rather an excitement than an amusement; and at an early period people sought the latter by a combination of the dice-throwing with some other system of movements or calculations. In this way, no doubt, originated the different games enumerated by John of Salisbury, the most popular of which was that of tables (_tabula_ or _tabulæ_). This game was in use among the Romans, and was in all probability borrowed from them by the Anglo-Saxons, among whom it was in great favour, and who called the game _tæfel_ (evidently a mere adoption of the Latin name), and the dice _teoselas_ and _tæfel-stanas_. The former evidently represents the Latin _tessellæ_, little cubes; and the latter seems to show that the Anglo-Saxon dice were usually made of stones. At a later period, the game of _tables_, used nearly always in the plural, is continually mentioned along with chess, as the two most fashionable and aristocratic games in use. An early and richly illuminated manuscript in the British Museum--perhaps of the beginning of the fourteenth century (MS. Harl. No. 1257)--furnishes us with the figures of players at tables represented in our cut No. 153. The table, or board, with bars or points, is here clearly delineated, and we see that the players use both dice and men, or pieces--the latter round discs, like our modern draughtsmen. In another manuscript, belonging to a rather later period of the fourteenth century (MS. Reg. 13 A. xviii. fol. 157, v^o), we have a diagram which shows the board as composed of two tables, represented in our cut No. 154. It was probably this construction which caused the name to be used in the plural; and as the Anglo-Saxons always used the name in the singular, as is the case also with John of Salisbury in the twelfth century, while the plural is always used by the writers of a later date, we seem justified in concluding that the board used by the Anglo-Saxons and Anglo-Normans consisted of one table, like that represented in our cut No. 153, and that this was afterwards superseded by the double board. It is hardly necessary to point out to our readers that these two pictures of the boards show us clearly that the mediæval game of tables was identical with our modern backgammon, or rather, we should perhaps say, that the game of backgammon, as now played, is one of the games played on the tables. [Illustration: _No. 154. A Table-Board (Backgammon) of the Fourteenth Century._]