The Roman Dodecahedron as a Multi-Compartment Volatile-Aromatics Vault: A Functional Hypothesis and Experimental Protocol

Roman dodecahedra are hollow copper-alloy dodecahedra with twelve circular apertures of graded diameters and a spherical knob at each of the twenty vertices. After nearly three centuries of study and more than one hundred finds, concentrated in the frontier provinces of Gaul, Germania, and Britain and dating principally to the 2nd–4th centuries AD, they remain functionally unexplained. This preprint proposes a unified functional hypothesis: the object is a portable, armored, multi-compartment vault for precious volatile substances (Latin aromata, a single ancient category spanning perfume, medicine, and fumigant), loaded with compounded waxes and resins through individually stoppered apertures whose diameters encode substance identity, value, and consumption rate. The hypothesis is developed through (i) a comparative analysis of attested Roman container technology, showing that no attested type combines more than three of the object's seven engineering features; (ii) documentary evidence from Pliny the Elder, Theophrastus, and Dioscorides establishing the economics and preparation formats of the proposed contents; (iii) a long-duration lineage argument linking the dodecahedron to the medieval pomander and its successors, device categories that recur wherever volatile supply chains, airborne-disease theory, and mobile elites intersect; and (iv) six falsifiable predictions with a five-part experimental protocol, including replica evaporation assays, wear-signature surveys, and non-invasive scanning of museum specimens.