Polis (board game)

Polis (Greek: πόλις) is one of the earliest know strategy games. Its name appears in the Ancient Greek literature around 450 BCE.

Like with many ancient games, not much is known about it. The earliest reference to polis is from Cratinos, an Athenian comic poet, in his comedy Drapetides (“Female Runaways”), from 443/442 BCE. The game was praised by Plato and Polybius, and possibly Philostratus, "as a game of strategy requiring great tactical skill". It was also likely referred to by Aristotle.

Some rules of the game were described by Julius Pollux in his Onomasticon. The board, like the game, was called polis, the pieces, which came in two colors and numbered thirty (per player, so sixty total), were called "dogs". There was no difference between pieces. It was a symmetrical game of elimination for two players, each playing with pieces of their color. It had no random elements, and the pieces moved in all directions on a square board. The game can be seen as resembling checkers but with a different mode of capture. The strategy involved maintaining formation and avoiding having one's pieces isolated.

The game was also seen as having educational value in learning how to learn and follow a set of rules. Leslie Kurke argued that the game had a cultural significance: " playing the board game polis might help form a Greek boy as a citizen of the city".

Thierry Depaulis recognized the game as one of the oldest known strategy games and argued that its emergence was one of the signs of the Axial Age (emergence of more complex thinking patterns, such as philosophy), as people moved from playing pure games of chance (such as dice games and race games) to strategy games.

A game board for polis was found in Rhamnous.