Roman numerals (Wikipedia)
On The Raudian Plain and David Birr's comment.
It seems that the highest number that can be written in Roman numerals is 3999. Those of us who are more than two decades old have lived through 1999 which was MCMLXLIX, immediately followed by 2000, MM, so 3999 would be MMMCMLXLIX:
MMM = 3000
CM = 900
L = 50
XL = 40
IX = 9
- and, if you can make sense of that, you are a better man than I am. I got it wrong several times and hope that it is right now.
The rule is that:
you can't have IIII, although it is on some English clocks, but must have IV;
you can't have VIIII but must have IX;
you can't have XXXX but must have XL;
you can't have CCCC but must have CD;
you can't have MMMM but there is no numeral higher than M.
(We saw a stone inscription to King Leopold in Belgium that had too many C's in the date.)
4 comments:
Romans would probably have discussed a large force like Marius' in terms of multiples of units of known size -- eg., "so-and-so many legions", or cohorts
Kaor, Paul!
And Westernized countries still use Roman numbers for some purposes, such as the ordinal numbers of the Popes and kings and queens. Or because some just like the LOOK of Roman numbers on things like clocks.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
I have read — although I cannot cite my source or vouch for its accuracy — that the ancient Romans did use IIII rather than IV. So a Roman might have expressed 3,999 as MMMIM, and then gone on to express somewhat larger numbers like 4,017, which would have been MMMMXVII.
With armies of multiple legions plus auxiliaries, the Imperial bureaucracy must have had some way to tally thousands of measures of grain and lentils, gallons of wine, and so forth, as well as track tax revenues (to some extent paid in kind), but I don’t know how they did it.
Best Regards,
Nicholas D. Rosen
Kaor, Nicholas!
Incidentally, and altho it was a very long time ago, I recall seeing a glimpse of how the Roman bureaucracy worked in David Drake's novel BIRDS OF PREY. About two thirds of the way thru the anarchy of 235-284. We also see a young soldier named Gaius Diocles in that book!
Ad astra! Sean
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