oftener, in the Augustan period;
is common during the last century of the republic and in the early empire; L, due to assimilation with the Roman letter, appears in the last century of the republic. The sign for 1000 was originally ↀ (Chalcidian ph); it became
(the common classical form),
, or
; the form M as a numeral appears in the second century A.D., although M is found much earlier as an abbreviation for mīllia in M · P, that is mīllia passuum. For 100, the sign
