The theme of the four empires has its roots in the translatio imperii theory popular since the middle ages. I doubt it is a tradition within card games but rather a result of writers independently trying to interpret the suits using translatio imperii to explain decks' fourfold division and kings. L...

But in Marziano's game, there are only four court cards, the Kings. That doesn't add up to much of an interesting game, if the trumps are mostly empty. So it seems worthwhile to imagine that assembling combinations of trumps also counted for points, and the easiest combinations to imagine, based on...

The other possibility that Dummett raises, "when a King or pip card was led, the trick could be won by a god only if it was of that suit, but that, when a god was led, it could be beaten by any higher god", is indeed another possible rule, one I had not thought of. In that it allows for both of the...

I want not to let another comment of Ross's go by without further notice. Another issue is the one Ross raised about Cupid being more powerful than Jupiter. I take that as Marziano's ironic suggestion of a circularity in the order, not that different from seeing the Fool as both the last card and b...

One thing that strikes me as surprising is the durability of Michelino's cards. Decembrio notes that they cost 1500 gold ducats. One would assume that they would rarely be played and kept only for display yet Decembrio notes that it was the duke's favourite game. These cards lasted for over twenty y...

At the very least, it is a five-suit trick-taking game with four plain suits and one longer trump suit. This is what we don't know: How many players? Do all cards get distributed or is there a talon? Are all cards worth the same like in whist? Do you have to follow suit? Can you play trumps whenever...

How did you get to that url, Ludophone? Google doesn't take me ther.. I have been wanting to access certain tarotpedia pages for months. I notice that "web.archive" is the first part of the url. Is there some magic way of getting to such places? I installed an add-on of the Wayback Machine for Fire...

For Piscina, you can use this link: https://web.archive.org/web/20161013145 ... corso_1565

Thanks, I'll check it out.

Since this book is long out of print and the nearest library that holds it requires a long haul flight, it would be best for me to just ask some questions regarding the game described by the anonymous discourse. Is there some clue as how this game was played? I'm aware that there was mention of berg...