138. Letters as Numeral Signs
In later Greek, Koph remained only as a curious survival. Although not used as a letter, it was a number symbol. None of the ancients possessed pure numeral symbols of the type of our “Arabic” ones. The Semites and the Greeks employed the letters of the alphabet for this purpose, each letter having a numeral value dependent on its place in the alphabet. Thus A stood for 1, B for 2, C or Gamma for 3, F for 6, I for 10, K for 20 and so on. As this series became established, Q as a numeral denoted 90; the Greeks, long after they had ceased writing Q as a letter, used it with this arithmetical value. Once it had acquired a place in the series, it would have been far too confusing to drop. With Q omitted, R would have had to be shifted in its value from 100 to 90. One man would have continued to use R with its old value, while his more new-fashioned neighbor or son would have written it to denote ten less. Arithmetic would have been as thoroughly wrecked as if we should decide to drop out the figure 5 and write 6 whenever we meant 5, 7 to express 6, and so on. Habit in such cases is insuperable. No matter how awkward an established system becomes, it normally remains more practical to retain with its deficiencies than to replace by a better scheme. The wrench and cost of reformation are greater, or are felt to be greater by each generation, than the advantages to be gained.