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A Roman Glass Gaming Die

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Re: A Roman Glass Gaming Die

#21

Post by Thrymr »

There are similar dice on display at the Met in New York: http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/...

Description: "A number of polyhedra made in various materials are known from the Roman world. They may have been used in conjunction with an oracle inscribed on a pillar set up in a public place. The polyhedron was thrown in order to choose a letter at random. One consulted the inscription to find the matching letter and read the oracle's response. There would be twenty oracular messages, each beginning with a letter of the alphabet that corresponded to one side of the dice."

Re: A Roman Glass Gaming Die

#23

Post by slurry »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #4
slurry wrote: post #3

This is as likely a magical object as a gaming die. Glass would have been expensive for a mere gambling device, whereas bone dice were cheap. It's a Platonic solid found in Egypt, the epicenter of Neoplatonism. And the symbols on the sides are astrological.

Fair enough on the symbols being astrological, but we do know the Romans used gaming dice. One of my favorite exhibits at a museum I visited in Bath was a pair of wooden dice from a Roman camp. There were two very cool things about them: they used the same dot pattern that we use today, and, as the plaque informed us, they were loaded, rolling 6 significantly more often than the other numbers.

In retrospect, those might just be Greek letters written a little fancy rather than astrological symbols. For instance, the circle with a dot could easily be a theta rather than a sun symbol. Current-day astrological glyphs don't seem to be well-attested before the middle ages.

Re: A Roman Glass Gaming Die

#24

Post by guard-of-terra »

slurry wrote: post #3

This is as likely a magical object as a gaming die. Glass would have been expensive for a mere gambling device, whereas bone dice were cheap. It's a Platonic solid found in Egypt, the epicenter of Neoplatonism. And the symbols on the sides are astrological.

In Middle Ages and before, games and magic and religion weren't separated.

Even mundane games played in taverns were magically bound to your luck and well-being. More sophisticated (board) games were outright sacred and were seen as a way to communicate with gods.

Re: A Roman Glass Gaming Die

#26

Post by pacmon »

Thrymr wrote: post #21

There are similar dice on display at the Met in New York: http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/... Description: "A number of polyhedra made in various materials are known from the Roman world. They may have been used in conjunction with an oracle inscribed on a pillar set up in a public place. The polyhedron was thrown in order to choose a letter at random. One consulted the inscription to find…

That description makes it sounds like an early version of the magic 8-ball.

Re: A Roman Glass Gaming Die

#27

Post by ronaldx »

baking wrote: post #15
keithpeter wrote: post #2

Wonderful. You can get so much Maths out of probability. The fifth most popular page on my personal Web site is http://sohcahtoa.org.uk/pages/rolling-two-dice-experiment.ht...

Off-hand, I would say you can't use chi-square unless you rolled at least 360 pairs of dice. Chi-square assumes a normal distribution and the rule-of-thumb you need at least ten hits and ten misses before the sample distribution approaches normal. Source: just helped my daughter pass her AP Stat mid-term.

It's common practice that the 'expected' values of a chi-squared test should be 5 or higher, with adjacent groups to be merged until this is the case (at UK A-level this is strictly required).

This is a slightly conservative correction and Wikipedia agrees that no correction is required in this case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearson%27s_chi-squared_test#P...

Re: A Roman Glass Gaming Die

#28

Post by zaporozhets »

Thrymr wrote: post #21

There are similar dice on display at the Met in New York: http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/... Description: "A number of polyhedra made in various materials are known from the Roman world. They may have been used in conjunction with an oracle inscribed on a pillar set up in a public place. The polyhedron was thrown in order to choose a letter at random. One consulted the inscription to find…

If you look closer, even the symbols match up in placement. Indeed, they are identical.

Re: A Roman Glass Gaming Die

#29

Post by thaumasiotes »

DougWebb wrote: post #6
thaumasiotes wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough on the symbols being astrological, but we do know the Romans used gaming dice. One of my favorite exhibits at a museum I visited in Bath was a pair of wooden dice from a Roman camp. There were two very cool things about them: they used the same dot pattern that we use today, and, as the plaque informed us, they were loaded, rolling 6 significantly more often than the other numbers.

Not surprised that they were loaded that way; the 6 side has the most material removed, so it's the lightest. A fair die needs to be counter-balanced.

I believe the dots were painted, not pitted.

Re: A Roman Glass Gaming Die

#30

Post by [deleted] »

hosh wrote: post #16
slurry wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could have been rolled as an oracle. Although glass strikes me as not the best material for that. Especially ancient glass that didn't have all of the chemical strengtheners that modern glass does It might have been just an object of contemplation. Like, you can see how all of the heavenly bodies fit snugly into a perfect geometric figure and just wonder at it. If there's any rhyme or reason to how the symbols are ar…

Dude (or dudette?), what do you practice? (Can take this to PM if you prefer).

[deleted]
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