Because of the scarcity of sources, reconstruction of the game's rules and basic structure is difficult, and therefore there are multiple interpretations of the available evidence.

[1] In Plato's Republic, Socrates' opponents are compared to "bad Petteia players, who are finally cornered and made unable to move."

Latrunculi is often compared to a draughts-like game with custodial capture, called seega, known in Egypt from the late 18th century.

[2] An account of a game of latrunculi is given in the 1st-century AD Laus Pisonis: When you are weary with the weight of your studies, if perhaps you are pleased not to be inactive but to start games of skill, in a more clever way you vary the moves of your counters on the open board, and wars are fought out by a soldiery of glass, so that at one time a white counter traps blacks, and at another a black traps whites.

Your battle line joins combat in a thousand ways: that counter, flying from a pursuer, itself makes a capture; another, which stood at a vantage point, comes from a position far retired; this one dares to trust itself to the struggle, and deceives an enemy advancing on its prey; that one risks dangerous traps, and, apparently entrapped itself, counter traps two opponents; this one is advanced to greater things, so that when the formation is broken, it may quickly burst into the columns, and so that, when the rampart is overthrown, it may devastate the closed walls.

Ars amatoria 3.358 ("when one counter perishes by a twin foe"); cum medius gemino calculus hoste perit, Ov.

R. G. Austin has argued, however, that the passage from Isidore on which this belief was based refers to an early form of Tabula.

[8] The Stanway game, excavated near Colchester, has been identified by scholars such as David Parlett as possibly being an example of latrunculi.

Myron J. Samsin and Yuri Averbakh have both supported the theory that Petteia may have had an influence on the historical development of early chess, particularly the movement of the pawns.