Index

Roman Numerals

Roman numerals were used in ancient Rome and throughout Europe until the start of the Middle ages. The number system uses combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet with rules for adding and subtracting values depending on the relative position of the letters. Roman numerals began to be replaced by Arabic numerals in the 14th century for accounting and arithmetic calculations, but they are still used today for some artistic applications.

Roman civilization and the Roman Empire had a strong government that held a large territory around the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, Africa and Asia. As conquerors, the Romans spread their culture, language and Roman numbers throughout their domain. The Romance Languages, including Spanish, Italian, Catalan, Portuguese, French and Romanian, are derived from the Vulgar Latin spoken by the Romans, which originated from Classical Latin. Spanish is the most widely spoken Romance language in the world and it is second only to Chinese in the number of native speakers.

Roman numbers are based on seven Latin letters with the following values: I=1, V=5, X=10, L=50, C=100, D=500 and M=1000. Numbers that are not represented exactly by the seven Latin letters are coded by repeating the letters and by placing one letter of lower value to the left of one of higher value, or up to three letters of lower value to the right of one of higher value. The smaller values to the left are subtracted, and the smaller values to the right are added. Thus XIII represents 13 (10+3), wheras IX represents 9 (10-1). The Roman numeral MDCCLXXVI at the bottom of the pyramid in the Great Seal of the United States represents 1776 (1000+500+100+100+50+10+10+5+1). Roman numbers that are multiples of 1000 are indicated with a line above the number. For example, V represents five thousand.

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