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: