Claudia Pieris’ tombstone (CIL VI.15543) She lived 117-138 AD. Now in Copenhagen, at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek.
The Romans used several different systems for writing numbers. Sometimes they wrote numbers like this: I II III IV V and other times they used the Greek numbers. Roman people didn’t always write numbers the same way, either – people knew what you meant even if you did it a little differently.
On this Roman woman’s tombstone from the time of the emperor Hadrian, the last line shows how long she lived. It starts with QVA-VIX-AN – that’s short for “Who lived in years…” and then it shows how many years, how many months, and how many days. Can you work it out?
Here’s a table showing all of the Roman numerals.
| I | 1 | L | 50 | |
| II | 2 | C | 100 | |
| III | 3 | D | 500 | |
| IV (or IIII) | 4 | M | 1000 | |
| V | 5 | |||
| VI | 6 | |||
| VII | 7 | |||
| VIII | 8 | |||
| IX (or VIIII) | 9 | |||
| X | 10 |
So MMIII is 2003, and XXIV is 24, and CLVII is 157. (Putting a bigger number like V after a smaller number like I means “1 less than 5” or 4).
Want some more practice? Try writing these numbers in Roman numbers (see the second page for the answers):
314
26
1975
2010
More about Roman numerals
Bibliography and further reading about Roman numbers:
