
A Roman Glass Gaming Die - luu
http://www.christies.com/Lotfinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectID=4205385
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Thrymr
There are similar dice on display at the Met in New York:
[http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-
collections/...](http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-
collections/253530?rpp=60&pg=1&ao=on&ft=dice&pos=37)

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."

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

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slurry
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.

~~~
thaumasiotes
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.

~~~
DougWebb
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.

~~~
thaumasiotes
I believe the dots were painted, not pitted.

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walshemj
Pity the British museum doesn't make a nice replica of that I know a few
gamers who woudl buy them.

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deletes
It's a twenty-sided die; a wet dream of any d&d player.

 _Hidden bonus: +1 on any roll_

~~~
partomniscient
Why not just make 10 louder?

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maxerickson
From 2003.

Allow me to summarize the internet commentary since then:

Hur hur, D&D.

Repost.

~~~
anon4
And the relevant XKCD comic [https://xkcd.com/593/](https://xkcd.com/593/)

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ergoproxy
I recognize the symbol ☉ for gold (or sun) on one of the 20 faces, namely a
circle with a dot in the middle (encoded in unicode as 2609 or in html as
9737).

Does anybody know what symbols appear on the other 19 faces of this die?

Also, has anybody run a Chi-Square test for determining the fairness of this
die??? I wouldn't pay $17,925 for a loaded die.

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zokier
> Acquired by the current owner's father in Egypt in the 1920s

I think the ethics of trading such goods (at high prices) are bit
questionable. It is a piece of local cultural heritage which more than likely
was acquired in a more or less exploitative way.

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downer83
ANCIENT NANOTECHNOLOGY!

[http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/this-1600-year-old-
gob...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/this-1600-year-old-goblet-shows-
that-the-romans-were-nanotechnology-pioneers-787224/)

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drunkenfly
Game produced in 1991 sells for $91k+ on eBay, gaming device made in 2nd
century AD sells for almost $18k on Christies. Should have tried to sell it on
eBay first.

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meerita
Glass. One of the most expensive things in the Republic and Imperialist Roman
era. That dice would be part for sure of a wealthy roman owner.

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ealloc
I wonder how biased it is, and what lengths they took to make it unbiased.

~~~
deletes
Do I hear a authentic reproduction kickstarter?

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keithpeter
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...](http://sohcahtoa.org.uk/pages/rolling-two-dice-
experiment.html)

~~~
baking
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.

~~~
ronaldx
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...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearson%27s_chi-
squared_test#Problems)

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parski
With that die I'd crit on every toss.

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stuaxo
Fake like those crystal skulls ?

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izietto
Did Romans play at D&D???

