Astragali enter poetry from classical antiquity as instruments of fate and playful chance. Greek and Roman poets reference them in scenes of gambling or prophecy. In English verse they evoke the primitive roots of games, connecting the toss of bones to oracular insight and the arbitrary judgments of the gods, enriching themes of destiny and human vulnerability.

Astragali, the ankle-bones used as early dice, root the poetry of chance in the body of the animal and in the earliest archaeological record of play. The term allows poets to evoke both divination and gambling with a single ancient object. Instructors can use astragali to introduce the long continuity of dice symbolism from classical to modern verse. Related objects include knucklebones and the later cubic die. The word’s foreignness itself can signal a deliberate turn toward archaic or oracular modes of speech.