Claude de Boissière | Nobilissimus et antiquissimus ludus Pythagoreus, Paris, 1556

Claude de Boissière

Nobilissimus et antiquissimus ludus Pythagoreus (qui Rythmomachia nominatur) in utilitatem & relaxationem studiosorum comparatus. Paris: [Benoît Prévost] for Guillaume Cavellat, equipment for sale with Jean Gentil, 1556

4to (158 x 113 mm). Collation: A–F⁸, G⁴: 52 leaves, italic type, 27 lines plus headline, woodcut figures in text, some full-page, contemporary limp vellum, worming to endleaves

A manual for the board game of battling numbers known as rithmomachia, ludus philosophorum, or philosopher's game. The author, a mathematician and teacher at the Collège Royal in Paris, suggests that Pythagoras and his followers may have been its inventors. The work had been first printed in French in 1554 (and "nouvellement amplifié" in 1556). On the title-page, the bookseller Cavellat directs the reader to a vendor of boards and playing-pieces (“Abacus & calculi vaeneunt in Palatio, apud Ioannem Gentil”). 

LITERATURE:

USTC 152123; VDL Geschichte I p.373; Schachlitteratur 350; KB 4775; Adams B2346; Smith Rara Mathematica p. 271