Roman Dodecahedra

    Dozens of hollow, bronze dodecahedra survive from Roman times, the second to fourth century. They have been found in Great Britain, Belgium, Germany, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Austria, switzerland, and Hungary. Ranging from 4 to 11 cm, they are embellished with spheroids at each vertex and circular holes of various diameters in each face.  The articles by Artmann, Emmer, and Malkevitch (listed in the references) describe them further.  The 10 cm example illustrated at right is scanned from the article by Malkevitch.   Often there are concentric circles scored around the openings, as in the 8 cm example below, from the article by Emmer.
     


    The function of these dodecahedra has not been determined.  (So it is not clear that I should list them here under the category art.)  Speculation includes: candle stands, flower stands, staff or scepter decorations, surveying instruments, leveling instrument, finger ring-size gauges, dice, a toy to throw and catch on a stick, and geometric sculpture. No one knows.
     

    Artmann also reports one Roman icosahedron, illustrated at left.  It is also hollow, bronze, and about 8 cm in diameter.  This only deepens the mystery as to the function of these objects.

    Interestingly, it was put away in a museum's basement storage, misclassified as a "dodecahedron" for forty years before someone noticed it was not a dodecahedron.  That illustrates nicely how people see things differently depending on their background knowledge.

    If you read German, read this nice survey article by Bernhard A. Greiner.
     
     

    Note: I took some artistic license and colorized these three images to be slightly green, from the original black and white.

    Virtual Polyhedra, (c) 1998, George W. Hart