Roman numerals, the numeric system used in ancient Rome and throughout Europe until the dawn of the Middle Ages, use combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet to signify values.
Numbers are formed by combining symbols and adding the values, so II is two (two ones) and XIII is thirteen (a ten and three ones). There is no zero in this system and characters do not represent tens, hundreds and so on according to position as in 207 or 1066; those numbers are written as CCVII (two hundreds, a five and two ones) and MLXVI (a thousand, a fifty, a ten, a five and a one).
Symbols are placed from left to right in order of value, starting with the largest. However, in a few specific cases, to avoid four characters being repeated in succession (such as IIII or XXXX), subtractive notation is often used as follows:
- I placed before V or X indicates one less, so four is IV (one less than five) and nine is IX (one less than ten)
- X placed before L or C indicates ten less, so forty is XL (ten less than fifty) and ninety is XC (ten less than a hundred)
- C placed before D or M indicates a hundred less, so four hundred is CD (a hundred less than five hundred) and nine hundred is CM (a hundred less than a thousand)
Here’s Roman Numerals 1 through 100.
Here’s some examples above 100.
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