This book is part of the ERC Advanced Grant research programme Locus Ludi. The Cultural Fabric of Play and Games in Classical Antiquity, coordinated by Dasen. It follows upon numerous scholarly events and publications (two international colloquia in Caen in 2017 and 2019, a webinar in 2020, the publication of two thematic dossiers on ‘Jeux et jouets’, Kentron 34 [2018], and ‘Jeu, normes et transgressions’, Kentron 36 [2021], and numerous other publications of the Locus Ludi research programme). The aim of all this research is to use play as an angle of approach to renew the understanding of the social, political, religious, identity-focused and ethnic issues that shaped Graeco-Roman antiquity. The most recent publications (including this book) explore the relationship between play and violence. This exploration is all the more interesting since it is a topical issue (e.g. with reference to video games and television series in contemporary society in which this link is sometimes obvious), and there are very few recent works on the subject, apart from that by C. Illouz (cf. C. Illouz and P. Prétou [edd.], Heur et malheur du joueur. Études sur la violence et le jeu [2018]), who was invited to write the afterword to this collection.

The great merit of this volume is that it manages to combine diversity and coherence. The diversity stems from the diachronic aspect of the work (which extends from antiquity to the present day) and from its multidisciplinary nature: not only are the authors specialists in different periods, but they base their analyses on sources as diverse as historical, literary and legal texts, letters, oral testimonies, administrative reports, vocabulary, figurative representations, sculptures and films.

If, behind this abundance, the book retains unity, it is because it is clearly the product of a solid collective intellectual construction (as shown by the introductory section and the many cross-references between articles) and because all the authors adopt an approach based on historical anthropology, supported by shared bibliographical references (four items recur throughout the various articles: R. Caillois, Les jeux et les hommes. Le masque et le vertige [1958]; J. Huizinga, Homo Ludens. Essai sur la fonction sociale du jeu [1951, 1988]; R. Hamayon, Jouer, une autre façon d'agir. Étude anthropologique à partir d'exemples sibériens [2021]; C. Duflo, Jouer et philosopher [1997]) and by the implementation of the same idea: the opposition between play and violence is only apparent, because, in reality, violence is an integral part of play; it is regulated by means of a ‘play contract’ to which players voluntarily adhere, so that violence, once accepted, can no longer be considered as abuse. This position leads the authors to consider (the process of) ‘playing’ as much as the game itself.

These are the foundations on which the fourteen articles (not including the introductory section and afterword) are built, presented in chronological order: eight on the Graeco-Roman world, three on the period from the twelfth to the seventeenth centuries, two on the Second World War and one on the contemporary period.

The eight articles on antiquity focus on two fundamental questions: the logic of ‘play’ – including the definition and management of playful violence – and the relationship between play and reality. Haziza tackles these questions to explain Herodotus’ account of the game of basilinda played by the future Cyrus, which enabled him to be recognised by his grandfather, even though he was still officially the son of an obscure herdsman. E. Franchi and N. Richer analyse the complex relationship forged in Greek cities, particularly Sparta, between play, reality, violent war exercises and the building of an elite based on prestige. B. Carè and Dasen take a closer look at the astragalus. Carè shows how this game of jacks, traditionally associated with children, is linked to violence and death, either because of the passion it generates or because of its association with the mysteries of Dionysus, mania and flagellation. Dasen gives an example of this link through her study of a sculpture depicting a figure biting another person, of whom only the wrist and hand remain, clamped on an astragalus. Dasen tries to understand this gesture, which she interprets as a playful bite. The scene is important for what it says about the way in which the Romans tasted violence and the excitement it aroused in them during the ludi. E. Paillard draws a similar conclusion from her study of the stage games organised in Rome by Lucius Anicius Gallus to celebrate his victory over the Illyrians. By forcing the Greek artists, summoned for the occasion, to interrupt their performance to simulate a battle among themselves, the general imposed a Roman version of culture and inserted into the game a violence that itself became an object of entertainment. S. Forichon is interested in another kind of violence, that of the spectators, whose attitude he compares during pantomimes and chariot races in the first century ce. M. Vespa closes this first section with an analysis of the verb inludere, which lies at the intersection of play (derived from ludere, ‘to play’) and the outrage of making public the intimacy of a person of free status, especially a woman.

The articles in the second part of the book, ‘Violence et jeu du Moyen Âge à nos jours’, address the question of the boundary between play, playful violence and non-playful violence. The problem is raised by D. Balestracci and C. Cilona in their analysis of battagliole in Italian cities between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. Their approaches, sometimes contradictory (on the place of carnival [p. 248 / p. 265], on the appropriateness of talking about violence in the case of battagliole [p. 238 / p. 262]), reveal the difficulty of the question. D. Roussel also studies the question when she tries to understand the role played by gambling in the development of violence in France, and more specifically in Paris, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The two articles on the Second World War (by C. Mahé and D. Gomet) look at play – children's play and the sporting games played by prisoners of war, as they came face to face with the violence of the fighting and the German authorities. With V. Faingnaert, this confrontation between playful violence and violence outside the game takes the form of a reflection on the ‘moment punitif’ (p. 327) – that is, the punishment that society decides to apply to repress violence – and on the way in which it is portrayed in a selection of films from 2000 to 2010 through the use of a game that serves as both a ‘modalité punitive’ and a ‘moyen de rédemption’ (p. 327).

All the articles are interesting, making this a high-quality volume. The introductory and concluding sections are extremely well documented and effectively position the problem. In the afterword Illouz makes a timely return to the question of where the violence that forms part of the play contract ends and when it degenerates into ‘violence incontrôlée’ (p. 234). Given the impossibility of establishing a precise boundary, he speaks of ‘graduation’ (‘la violence de fait dans le jeu et sa graduation’, p. 352) and stresses the importance of ‘la règle du jeu’, which is not intended to ‘proscrire toute violence, mais d'alerter sur le préjudice ludique d'un trop de violence, dont le seuil précis ne peut être préalablement indiqué’ (p. 356; italics in the text). All the articles in the book, in their own way, corroborate these thoughts. However, one regrets the choice of a chronological rather than thematic structure. Admittedly, the wide temporal range may justify this decision, but highlighting a number of key ideas would have made the cross-disciplinary aspect of the subject even more apparent. For example, the first part of the introduction would probably not have ended by focusing on antiquity (pp. 36–9), even though the book contains an entire chapter on the period from the Middle Ages to the present day. This might also have allowed other underlying notions to emerge, which remain underlying but are not properly explored, such as the notion of power, considered inside the game, in its relationship with the players’ freedom and submission to rules, and outside the game, in the relationship with society. The notion of pleasure, inherent in the game, could have been juxtaposed with the reality of violence in play. These few comments in no way detract from the value of this book, which is well worth reading and reflecting on.