The question is, at what date are we to fix the invention of playing-cards, and to whom are we to attribute it? In order to solve these queries, they must be divided; for, although the introduction of playing-cards into Europe may not date back beyond the fourteenth century, and the invention of our game of piquet may not have been prior to the reign of Charles VII., it is at least asserted--(1st), that playing-cards existed in India in the twelfth century; (2nd), that the ancients played at games in which certain figures and numbers were represented on dice or tablets; (3rd), that in comparatively recent times the game of chess and the game of cards presented striking affinities, proving the common origin of these two games--one connected with painting, the other with sculpture. If we are to believe Herodotus, the Lydians, in order to beguile the sufferings of hunger during a long and cruel famine, invented nearly every game, especially that of dice. Later authors ascribe the honour of these inventions to the Greeks, when irritated at the tedious delays of the siege of Troy. Cicero even mentions by name Pyrrhus and Palamedes as the originators of the “games in use in camps” (_ludos castrenses_). What were these games? Some say, chess; others, dice or knuckle-bones. Certain very ancient specimens prove unquestionably that the Indian cards were nothing but a transformation of the game of chess; for the principal pieces in this game are reproduced on the cards, but in such a way that eight players instead of two could take part in it. In the game of chess there were only two armies of pawns, each having at its head a king, a vizier (who was afterwards turned into a “queen”), a knight, an elephant (which became a “bishop”), and a dromedary (afterwards a “castle”). There can be no doubt that the course and arrangement of these games were very different; but in both may be found an original affinity in the fact that they recalled to mind the terrible game of war, in which each adversary had to attack by means of stratagems, combinations, and vigilance. We have now learned from certain authority (Abel de Rémusat, _Journal Asiatique_, September, 1822) that playing-cards, proceeding from India and China, were, like the game of chess (Fig. 203), in the hands of the Arabians and the Saracens at the commencement of the twelfth century. It is therefore almost certain they must have been brought into Europe after the Crusades, with the arts, traditions, and customs which the men of the West then derived from their Oriental antagonists. There is, however, every reason to believe that the use of cards spread but slowly; for at an epoch when the civil and ecclesiastical authorities were constantly issuing ordinances against games of chance, we do not find that cards were ever the subject of legal proceedings, like dice and chess.