draughts, the pieces of a Roman game which in some respects resembled chess. They were generally coloured black or white, to distinguish the sides on which they were played, and their movements along the squares, or spaces of the board, were defined by fixed laws. The number of pieces seems to have varied from five to twelve, and in later times the game was converted from one of skill to one of chance, by the use of the tesserae, or dice. The invention of the game is by some attributed to Palamedes, and it was certainly common in the days of Homer. Seneca attributes it to Chilon, one of the seven Greek sages. Like chess, the game runs back to an unknown antiquity.