RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
A1 Otisk, Marek
T1 Rithmomachia - the Battle of Numbers, i.e. the Arithmetical Game of Philosophers
JF Aither
YR 2015
VO 7
IS 2
SP 118
OP 139
DO 10.5507/aither.2015.018
UL https://aither.upol.cz/en/artkey/ath-201502-0009.php
AB This paper deals with the philosopher's game called rithmomachia, i.e. the battle of the numbers. The beginnings of the playing of this game we can find around the year 1000 AD, the oldest texts are dated to the first half of the 11th century. The aim of this paper is the description of selected rules of this game according to the oldest texts about rithmomachy (written between ca. 1030 and ca. 1130). This article mainly wants to focus on the correlation between those rules and the subject of interest of the medieval intellectuals in the field of arithmetic (especially in the context of Boethius's Introduction to Arithmetic).