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Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#341

Post by karaterobot »

zoky wrote: post #330
karaterobot wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right that the master metal worker should be able to sniff out a fraud, but then what role does the dodecahedron play? It would be like me applying to a programming job by showing up with a ZIP file of some code I'd written in the past, which of course I promise I didn't steal from a better programmer. You'd probably give it very little credence compared to either personal references or work done in front of y…

If your dodecahedron were essentially your “resume”, you’d go out of your way to keep it safe from thieves. Besides, stealing one wouldn’t do you much good, as you’d be discovered as a fraud pretty quickly based on the quality of your work. Having one of these in your possession would be enough to get you in the door, as well as giving your potential employer a quick and easy way to judge the quality of your work. Th…

I don't see anything about the dodecahedrons being signed or stamped or branded in any way, so I can't buy them being a resume. Seems like if it were your personal proof of employability, and you cared a lot about it not being stolen, the first thing you'd put some mark on it to indicate it was yours. And then there's the fact that some of them have been found buried in coin hoards, which doesn't make sense (why would you collect a craftsman's portfolio piece and store it with your treasure?).

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#342

Post by SantalBlush »

devnullbrain wrote: post #325
SantalBlush wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the archaeologists saying, “Nobody knows for certain how the Romans used them,” and offering a variety of competing theories, while people on this thread are trying to finesse the facts to support the theory they like. So saying, "archaeologists are doing it" is demonstrably untrue here.

>people on this thread are trying to finesse the facts to support the theory they like. Explicitly so, given that the root of this thread is saying it is a theory that they 'like', not that they think is objective truth.

The original commenter was explicit that they liked the theory, not that they were willing to make things up to support it. Those are two completely different things.

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#343

Post by cubefox »

dylan604 wrote: post #292
CamperBob2 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then there's my favorite, Pascal's Wager: "Why not accept my particular God? What do you have to lose?" Advocates of the Wager never seem to consider what Zeus's opinion might be.

Your assumption is that the advocates of the Wager give a damn about Zeus to be begin with which seems flawed to me.

No that's not his assumption. Pascal's wager is supposed to be an argument to believe in "God", but it is too general. It doesn't determine in which god. So the argument doesn't work.

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#344

Post by somat »

pwillia7 wrote: post #39

Why wouldn't it just be a 12 sided die for gambling?

No numbers on the sides is probably a clue. Now, on many of them each hole is a different width, it is hard to understand the culture and mannerisms that long ago but i find it improbable that could be used in a quick game of chance to see what has been rolled.

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#345

Post by signalToNose »

mrob wrote: post #10

I like the theory that it's an examination piece to qualify as a master metalworker. Casting a flawless dodecahedron could have been a way to demonstrate your skill. The shape is somewhat arbitrary: anything that's both difficult to cast and easy to examine for quality would work, but once people started making dodecahedrons that's what people expected and it became a kind of standard.

And that dodecahedron would be a challenge to 3d print

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#347

Post by yetanotherloser »

tessierashpool wrote: post #315
yetanotherloser wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Board games are much older than the Romans, though possibly not older than writing - and texts give us a bit of a clue that some early ones were part recreation part ceremonial. By Roman times pure recreational games were common and reasonably often referenced in their literature. They definitely used cubic dice with numbers on for games (and gambling). The icosahedral dice usually have Greek letters rather than numb…

Greek letters were used as numbers during the time of the Romans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_numerals also, sorry to be that guy, but D&D hasn't had a thief class since 3rd edition came out, in 2000.

re: being That Guy: I know. It's a weak "Romans were old school" joke.

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#349

Post by ffgjgf1 »

lazide wrote: post #290
stevenwoo wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article mentions that none of them exhibit wear marks that are characteristic of tools.

Do you think show pieces in rich households would be used? I’d argue if they did, someone was getting fired immediately.

Have we found any other shows pieces for other household items? Because if not, it’s very unlikely that’s the case

Re: Another Roman dodecahedron has been unearthed in England

#350

Post by ffgjgf1 »

nemo wrote: post #259
mkl wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cultures and traditions are different in different places, even with gigabit internet and ubiquitous literacy.

Roman North Africa was thoroughly Romanized by the era these start showing up, and the eastern provinces were as well. The might be some cultural reason these show up where they do, seems likely, it's very, very dubious that this cultural reason had to do with metalworkers identifying themselves since the sort of Roman metal working technology and culture around it was actually very standardized across the empire at…

> culture around it was actually very standardized across the empire at this time.

We really have no data at all to back such a claim.

We barely even know anything about how metalworkers and other skilled craftsmen organized themselves back in those days in any part of the empire

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