Il nobilissimo et antiquissimo giuoco Pythagoreo nominato rythmomachia, cioè battaglia di consonantie de numeri.

Bookseller Notes

This sixteenth-century work is an important treatise on the medieval board game Rithmomachia (Battle of the Numbers), by an Italian humanist who was tried by the inquisition for sorcery. Supposedly developed as a learning tool for the contemplative values of Boethian mathematics, rithmomachia was originally attributed to Pythagoras - as the title here suggests - but likely originated in the eleventh century. Also known as the Ludus Philosophorum, rithmomachia is similar to chess, but capture depends on numbers inscribed on each piece. The game was played on a board with eight squares on one side and sixteen on the other, with pieces known as circles, triangles, squares and pyramids, each with a different value. These are usefully illustrated in the present work, which contains a printed board, detailed views of the pieces, and various tabulated outcomes and scenarios against which the learner can pit herself.The author Francesco Barozzi (1537-1604) was an astronomer, humanist and mathematician. Born in Heraklion to a Venetian noble family, he lived in Venice for most of this life, but seems to have learnt to play rithmomachia in Bologna. In the process of teaching the game to others he developed this guide, which he dedicates to Bolognese senator Camille Paleotti. It became, and is still considered, one of the three earliest and most essential treatises on the ancient game, its only forerunners being a 1496 edition of Boethius, and a 1556 Latin treatise by Calude de Bossire.Barozzi was dogged by accusations of occult activity; whilst at college in Padua he was accused of cutting someone's hair for uses unknown, and he later published a collection of the prophecies of Nostradamus which laid him open to further suspicion. In c.1583 he was tried by the Inquisition on an unknown charge and found guilty, and was later found guilty of apostasy, heresy, and engaging in the occult - specifically with reference to causing a torrential rain storm in Crete.