 The most romantic aspect of the tradition concerning Hippasus is the report that he drowned at sea in punishment for the impiety of making public and giving a diagram of the dodecahedron, a figure with twelve surfaces each in the shape of a regular pentagon (Iamblichus, VP 88). This is best understood as reflecting some sort of mathematical analysis of the dodecahedron by Hippasus, but it is implausible in terms of the history of Greek mathematics to suppose that he carried out a strict construction of the dodecahedron, which along with the other four regular solids is most likely to have first received rigorous treatment by Theaetetus in the fourth century BCE (Mueller 1997, 277; Waterhouse 1972; Sachs1917, 82). Nor is it clear why public presentation of technical mathematical analysis should cause a scandal, since few people would understand it. The most likely explanation is that the dodecahedron was a cult object for the Pythagoreans (dodecahedra in stone and bronze have been found dating back to prehistoric times) and that it was because of these religious connections that Hippasus’ public work on the mathematical aspects of the solid was seen as impious (Burkert 1972a, 460).