The Enigma of the Roman Dodecahedron is Revealed!

[Thorvald of Lym]

Days without thinking about Rome: 0

In sum: The theory proposes the dodecahedron was a component of military cryptology. In addition to providing an aperture for the cipher discs, it was used to seal the dispatches in a way that provided the receiver a quick reference to which cipher applied. Multiple faces meant it could switch between different ciphers easily, such as when communicating over multiple channels, or in the event a cipher was suspected to be compromised.

I'm not familiar with the leading dodecahedron theories, but for someone who got really deep into EnigmaSim a few years ago, it's a very intriguing contender.

 

[Kyriakos]

Possible, but romans weren't that mathematically oriented. Military cryptography is documented to be in existence at least as early as the Peloponnesian war, with the earliest variant being the spartan cryptia.

 

[Gorbles]

Isn't this the thing someone figured out was good for knitting? Or was that just a meme?

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

Isn't this the thing someone figured out was good for knitting? Or was that just a meme?

Valid repurposing today, but the problem is Romans didn't knit.

 

[Kyriakos]

A dodecahedron - even moreso if we assume all were of the same size - wouldn't be a good idea to use to descrypt messages in the first place; the whole point is to not have a conspicuous tool to do so. Eg rods (cylinders) of varying sizes were used in the cryptia, rendering any given size meaningless.