Why Romans Used Lopsided Dice
Recent research by UC Davis Department of Anthropology faculty member Jelmer Eerkens and his colleague, Alex de Voogt from Drew University, suggests that these dice are not “cheaters” dice, as some argue, but relate to the way Romans understood how the world worked. Romans did not believe dice rolls were random or dictated by probability, as we generally do today. Instead, they understood dice rolling to be controlled by gods, who either favored you or not in game play or divination. Therefore, in the Roman view, die shape did not affect die-rolling properties, and a lopsided die worked the same as a perfectly cubic one. Dr. Eerkens and his co-author measured Roman-period dice from the Netherlands, and conducted modern experiments on die-making with naïve die users to reach these conclusions. Their research was written up in a paper titled “Why are Roman-Period Dice Asymmetrical? An Experimental and Quantitative Approach”, which was published in June, 2022, in the journal Achaeological and Anthropological Sciences (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-022-01599-y)