Roman numerals

The system of Roman numerals is a numeral system originating in ancient Rome, and was adapted from Etruscan numerals. The system used in antiquity was slightly modified in the Middle Ages to produce the system we use today.

Origins

Although the Roman numerals are now written with letters of the Roman alphabet, they were originally separate symbols. The Etruscans, for example, used I ? X ? 8 ? for I V X L C M.

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They appear to derive from notches on tally sticks, such as those used by Italian and Dalmatian shepherds into the 19th century. Thus, the I descends from a notch scored across the stick. Every fifth notch was double cut (?, ?, ?, ?, etc.), and every tenth was cross cut (X), much like European tally marks today. This produced a positional system: Eight on a counting stick was eight tallies, IIII?III, but this could be written ?III (or VIII), as the ? implies the four prior notches. Likewise, number four on the stick was the I-notch that could be felt just before the cut of the V, so it could be written as either IIII or IV. Thus the system was neither additive nor subtractive in its conception, but ordinal. When the tallies were later transfered to writing, the marks were easily identified with the existing Roman letters I, V, X.

Related Topics:
Tally sticks - Dalmatia - Tally marks - Ordinal

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(A folk etymology has it that the V represented a hand, and that the X was made by placing two Vs on top of each other, one inverted.)

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The tenth V or X along the stick received an extra stroke. Thus 50 was written variously as N, ?, K, ?, ?, etc., but perhaps most often as a chicken-track shape like a superimposed V and I. This had flattened to ? (an inverted T) by the time of Augustus, and soon thereafter became identified with the graphically similar letter L. Likewise, 100 was variously ?, ?, ?, H, or as any of the symbols for 50 above plus an extra stroke. The form ? (that is, a superimposed X and I) came to predominate, was written variously as >I< or ?IC, was then shortened to ? or C, with C finally winning out because, as a letter, it stood for centum (Latin for 'hundred').

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The hundredth V or X was marked with a box or circle. Thus 500 was like a ? superposed on a ? or ? (that is, like a Þ with a cross bar), becoming a struck-through D or a Ð by the time of Augustus, under the graphic influence of the letter D. It was later identified as the letter D. Meanwhile, 1000 was a circled X: ?, ?, ?, and by Augustinian times was partially identified with the Greek letter ?. It then evolved along several independent routes. Some variants, such as ? and CD (more accurately a reversed D adjacent to a regular D), were historical dead ends (although folk etymology later identified D for 500 as half of ? for 1000 because of the CD variant), while two variants of ? survive to this day. One, CI?, lead to the convention of using parentheses to indicate multiplication by 1000 (later extended to double parentheses as in ?, ?, etc.); in the other, ? became ? and ?, eventually changing to M under the influence of the word mille ('thousand').

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