Dark Side of the Horse by Samson for December 28, 2020

There are II kinds of people in the world: those who know Roman numerals and those who don’t.

Thank us Indians that we saved you from em Roman numerals!

Ironic how many people are XL before they turn 40

At least his nose is not Roman.

so Horace hit the snooZe key…!

Thanks I could have had a V-III

and for those of us who do——- life is good. (we also know cursive…go figure)

The numerals in several politicians “quotes” are seriously roamin’.

It’s hard to imagine a number system which required subtraction as a decoding feature. It sounds like an unnecessary complication just to save one of two numerals, until you realize that the numerals were originally incised in stone .

There is no “Z” in Roman numerals. Just saying.

Is Horace writing a book?

Roman more useful for decoding dates and page numbers pre-1600 manuscripts. Arabic too many arcs on the penstroke to keep legible, no veritas character to left or right to clue in a mistake. Also a very good warning whether clerk isn’t dotting the “i”.

Well, he is named after a Roman.

Is a little-known fact that Roman numerals aren’t really letters, or rather they didn’t start out that way. V is pretty obviously “half of a X” (or, perhaps just as valid, X can be seen as the two hands together). In Old Latin inscriptions 1,000 isn’t “M” yet but looks something like ᴄIᴐ. (The Wikipedia article on Roman Numerals also points out that D is really from something like IƆ.