The front reads
"PICTOS
VICTOS
HOSTIS
DELETA
LVDITE
SECVRI"
This translates as something along the lines of "Victory over the Picts, enemies destroyed, game safely"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vettweiss-Froitzheim_Dice_Tower
this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2025
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HistoryArtifacts
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Ok, the d20 I believed, but this? There's no way. It's just modeled after something to look ancient Roman, right?
Yeah, I don't want to be overly skeptical, but for some reason this seems way too cool to be true. But I really hope it's a real artifact
The Romans loved dicing. Most often in the form of gambling, but sometimes just for fun.
How do they date stuff like this anyway? Just examining the way it's made?
Mixture of factors. Activity at certain sites for one - if you know that a villa wasn't built until the reign of Tiberius, then you can figure pretty strongly that finds of Roman make at the site are contemporary with or post-date Tiberius. That sort of thing.
But there are also strong stylistic trends in many manufactured goods - pottery is a big one that can be traced like this.
For this one, I don't know the specifics (and I'm sure some of the specifics would be beyond me), but the Picts are not referenced in Roman writings until the late 3rd century AD, so it almost certainly post-dates the 3rd century by that alone.
You can't have some cagey bastard fudging the rolls when you're gambling! Make him use... THE TOWER
Wtf this is real and not ai generated