We read Roman Numerals daily without realizing it. Perhaps, there may be a clock at your home which has Roman Numerals. So you know what one to twelve looks like. But what about thirteen. Here we are sharing with you the history of Roman Numerals.

How did it all begin?

History of ancient Rome is connected with the history of Roman Numerals. The history of Rome begins at the Latin Palatine Hill in 8^th and 9^th century B.C. The empire fell in the 2^nd century AD from civil apathy, plague, rise of Christianity, Northern European Powers and civil war. The number system remained longer than the empire. The Arabic system was introduced to Europe in 11 century, this system was superseded by the Roman Numerals in the 14^th century.

The Etruscan numerals were adopted from the Greek Attic symbols. While the roman numerals are descendent of ancient Etruscan numerals.

The beginning of Roman Empire contains all qualities of industriousness, intellectual and inspirational. Big names such as Aristotle, Archamedes, Eratosthenes, Domitianus, Aristarchus, and Euclid with their excellent mathematical skills and decent intellectual helped build some biggest monuments in the world like Constantine’s Arch, Roman Baths, Colosseum, civil society and Pantheon.

Flaws in Roman Numerals System   

The biggest flaw in the number system was that they had no zero. Moreover, there was no method to count thousands after the figure grew high. To indicate multiples of value lines were placed over the numerals. Well, mostly roman numerals were used to write numbers in stones and coins.

Invention of Zero

In 300 A.D, the fall of Roman Empire caused the adoption of Arabic system. Perhaps, you don’t know about the Arabic system. The reason is today we know them by the name of decimal numbers. The numbers with the base of 10. The invention of zero revolutionized the number system.

How did roman Numerals take their form?

There are several theories that describe how the Etruscan and Roman numerals got their form. According to a theory, the tally sticks of shepherds, they use to count their cattle, became the inspiration for the form of numerals. The various notches in the sticks of shepherds give rise to several forms of numerals like I for single unit, double cut shows five (Λ or V) while X, a cross cut represents ten.

Another theory regarding Roman numerals was of hand signals. The numbers I, II, III, IIII corresponding to single fingers. The representation with thumb out and fingers together gave rise to form V. While the numbers from 6 to 9 were shown using V and fingers of the second hand. Crossing the thumbs of both hands made a formation to represent X.       

Roman Numerals use these days    

Roman numerals were not introduced to confine them only to books. The film sequels of Star Wars use Roman numerals or Frozen II. Moreover, they are used in the clock faces, Roman coins, in chapter heading, to list items and copyright dates. They often appear on sundials to show time.  

However, in clocks IV is not used instead IIII is used to add balance and symmetry to the clock. In all computer systems the packages such as pdf and word provide a feature to list item indicators in Roman Numerals.

Even though they are old we somehow like them and love to use those avoiding large numbers. So roman numerals are commonplace to represent a sense of classism.