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#REDIRECT Numeral systemsThe system of Roman numerals is a numeral system originating in ancient Rome. It is based on certain letters which are given values:
The early Romans used the above letters, but for multiples of thousands above 4 used combinations of I and a reversed C symbol. Later Romans used a horizontal line above a particular numeral to represent one thousand times that numeral, and additional vertical lines on either side of the numeral to denote one hundred times the number, as in these examples:
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I for 1000
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V for 5000
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|I| for 100,000
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|V| for 500,000
The same overline was also used with a different meaning, to clarify that the letters were numbers.
When describing members of a list, first A, B, C, D tended to be used, then 1, 2, 3 then i, ii, iii, iv.
In medieval times, well before the letter j was thought up as a distinct letter, a series of letters i in Roman numerals was ended with a flourish; hence they actually looked like: ij, iij, and iiij. This practice is now merely an antiquarian's note, it is never used.
1 Zero
In general, the number zero did not have its own Roman numeral, but the concept of zero as a number was well known by all medieval computistsComputus ( Latin for computation) is calculation of the date of Easter in the Christian calendar. The name has been used for this procedure since the early Middle Ages, as it was one of the most important computations of the age. The canonical rule is tha (calculators of EasterEaster is generally accounted the most important holiday of the Christian year, observed March or April each year to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus from the dead (after his death by crucifixion; see Good Friday), which Christians believe happened at). They included zero (via the LatinAlternative meanings: See Latin (disambiguation Latin was the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. It gained great importance as the formal language of the Roman Empire. All Romance languages are descended from Latin, and ma word nullae meaning nothing) as one of nineteen epactThe Epact (from Greek: epaktai hemerai added days) is, as the second Canon of the Gregorian Calendar reform puts it, "nothing else than the number of days which the common solar year of 365 days surpasses the common lunar year of 354 days" ( Latin: "Epacts, or the age of the moon on March 22. The first three epacts were nullae, xi, and xxii (written in minusculeMinuscule or lower case is the smaller form ( case) of letters (in the Roman alphabet: a b c . Originally alphabets were written entirely in majuscule (capital) letters which were spaced between well-defined upper and lower bounds. When written quickly wi or lower case). The first known computist to use zero was Dionysius ExiguusDionysius Exiguus ("Dennis the Small") (c. 540) was a 6th century AD Dacian monk born in Scythia Minor, in what is now the Dobruja, Romania. From 500 he lived as monk and friend of Cassiodorus (who wrote about him in Institutiones in Rome where, as an abb in 525, but the concept of zero was no doubt well known earlier. Only one instance of a Roman numeral for zero is known. About 725, Bede or one of his colleagues used the letter N, the initial of nullae, in a table of epacts, all written in Roman numerals.
The presence of a notation for the number zero should not be confused with the role of the digit zero in a positional notation system. Because of the lack of a character to represent zero, but also because of the additive nature of the roman numerals (there are no proper signs for two, three, four, six etc. either) prevented the Roman numerals from ever developing into a positional notation, and led to their gradual replacement by Arabic numerals in the early second millennium AD.
