A band of knife-wielding conspirators has just dispatched Julius Caesar to the underworld, and the body count is bound to rise as various high-ranking officials duke it out for the succession.

In an ancient Roman history game devised by Utah State history professor Mark Damen and two recent classics graduates, students garbed as senators, generals and foreign dignitaries vie for control of the Republic. Overseeing the unpredictable proceedings are the Gods (professors), who have been known to intervene on behalf of particularly generous worshippers. Candy (in Damen's case, Almond Joys) might sway the outcome.

Even with a God on their side, the contestants have to be lucky with the dice. One unfortunate roll, and a pile of legions collected in previous turns goes to a duplicitous rival. Even Damen, the Roman history expert, can't predict the victor.

Says Damen, "One year, Octavian went into alliance with Cleopatra to take over the Empire by assassinating Mark Antony. If you understand Roman history, this is quite unexpected. But historical accuracy is not what the game is about. The point is to teach students how the Roman world worked and how important it was to forge alliances and break them when the need arose."

Last year, says Damen, Cicero escaped assassination (the real Cicero was murdered soon after Caesar) and built an alliance of senators who managed somehow to save the Republic. But then, after winning Rome, the wily orator turned on his divine benefactor Jupiter (Mark Damen, no less) and demoted him to "cupbearer" of the gods. The treacherous wretch. Evidently he forgot about Jupiter's infamous temper tantrums, which often involve thunderbolts.

Damen-Jupiter claims to have forgiven Cicero's affront to his Olympian stature. So let the Battle of Actium begin! Juppiter wants to see how Neptune (Journalism Department Head Ted Pease wearing lots of lobster accoutrements) conducts himself as the game, in its final round, switches to his turf - the sea. It's supposed to be a fair fight.

"To a Roman historian, the death of the Republic and the rise of Augustus and the Empire look inevitable, or so we're led to believe," says Damen. "The Game has convinced me that things could have turned out very differently." -Jane Koerner

Click here to learn the rules of the game: http://www.usu.edu/markdamen/The%20Game/00titlepg.htm