ACCORDING to Astle, the combination of Greek numerical characters was not well known to the Latins before the thirteenth century, although Greek numerical characters were frequently used in France and Germany in episcopal letters, and continued to the eleventh century. But of all the Greek ciphers the episemon βαῦ was most in use with the Latins; it gradually assumed the form of G with a tail, for so it appears in a Latin inscription of the year 296. It is found to have been used in the fifth century in Latin MSS. It was reckoned for 6, and this value has been evinced by such a number of monumental proofs, that there is no room to give it any other. Some of the learned, with even Mabillon, have been mistaken in estimating it as 5, but in a posthumous work he acknowledges his error.
Those authors were led into this error by the medals of the Emperor Justinian having the episemon for 5; but it is a certain fact that the coiners had been mistaken and confounded it with the tailed U, for the episemon was still in use in the fourth century, and among the Latins was estimated as 6, but {94} under a form somewhat different. Whenever it appears in other monuments of the western nations of Europe of that very century and the following, it is rarely used to express any number except 5.
The Etruscans also used their letters for indicating numbers by writing them from right to left, and the ancient Danes copied the example in the application of their letters.
The Romans, when they borrowed arts and sciences from the Greeks, learned also their method of using alphabetical numeration. This custom, however, was not very ancient among them. Before writing was yet current with them, they made use of nails for reckoning years, and the method of driving those nails became in process of time a ceremony of their religion. The first eight Roman numerals were composed of the I and the V. The Roman ten was composed of the V proper and the V inverted (
), which characters served to reckon as far as forty; but when writing became more general, I, V, X, L, C, D, and M were the only characters appropriated to the indication of numbers. The above seven letters, in their most extensive combination, produce six hundred and sixty-six thousand, ranged thus, DCLXVIM. Some, however, contend that the Romans were strangers to any higher number than 100,000. The want of ciphers obliged them to double, treble, and multiply {95} their numerical characters four-fold, according as they had occasion to make them express units, tens, hundreds, etc. For the sake of brevity they had recourse to another expedient: by drawing a small line over any of their numeral characters they made them stand for as many thousands as they contained units. Thus a small line over Ī made it 1000, and over
expressed 10,000, etc.
When the Romans wrote several units together in succession, the first and last were longer than the rest IIIIII; thus vir after those six units signified sex-vir. D stood for 500, and the perpendicular line of this letter was sometimes separated from the body thus (I
