Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Turricula

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rich, Anthony (1849). The illustrated companion to the Latin dictionary, and Greek lexicon. p. vi. OCLC 894670115. https://archive.org/details/illustratedcompa00rich. 

TURRIC'ULA (πυργίδιον). Diminutive of TURRIS. Vitruv. x. 13. 6.

2. A dice-box, formed in the shape of a tower (Mart. xiv. 16.); whence it is also termed pyrgus (Sidon. Ep. viii. 12.), from the Greek word meaning a tower. The precise difference between the common dice-box, fritillus, and the turricula, is not sufficiently ascertained, some thinking that the former term designated only a box of circular form, like the example introduced at p. 302.; and the latter one a box with square sides, of which an example occurs in an old almanack supposed to have been executed in the time of Constantine (Lambecc. Bibliothec. Caes. tom. 4. Col. 1665.), where it is represented standing upon a table with a couple of dice by its side. But as the ancient towers were made both circular and angular, the name would be equally applicable to either form. Other scholars have thence concluded that the turricula, though probably similar in form, was an entirely distinct instrument from the fritillus, and employed together with it as an additional means of preventing unfairness at play. According to them it was fixed to the board (tabula), and the dice, instead of being cast directly from the fritillus on to the board, were thrown from it into the turricula, through which they fell on to the board, after acquiring additional rotation in their descent down its graduated sides. But this opinion is to be regarded as one collected from inferential reasoning, rather than proved by positive evidence.