Numeració romana: diferència entre les revisions
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== Història ==
=== Antecedents ===
By the time the city-state of Rome was founded, the [[Mediterranean]] east of Italy had already known several advanced literate civilizations, such as the [[Ancient Egypt]], [[Phoenicia]], [[Minoan civilization|Minos]], [[Mycenaean Greece|Mycenae]] and several others in [[Asia Minor]] and the [[Levant]]. These civilizations influenced the Romans directly or indirectly, such as in the [[alphabet]] (via the [[Etruscans]]).
The most obvious similarity between the Roman numerals and those older number systems is the use of 10 as the base, instead of 60 (as had been in use in [[Mesopotamia]] for a millennium) or 20. That choice, however, seems to have been made through most of Eurasia, including in [[India]] and [[China]].
The [[Egyptian numerals|old Egyptian system]] had a different non-phonetic symbol for each power of ten (so that, like the Romans, they did not need a symbol for zero). However, it repeated that symbol up to nine times to get the digits 1 to 9. The Egyptians had no separate symbols for 5, 50, etc. The symbol for 1 was a vertical stroke, and that for 10 was an inverted "U"; but higher powers were denoted by figurative [[hieroglyphs]].
The use of separate symbols for 5, 50, 500 etc. was a feature of the old [[Ancient Greece|Greek]] number system, the [[Attic numerals]]. The additive notation for writing the digits 6-9 (as the digit 5 plus the digits 1-4) was also a feature of that system. However, the symbols of the latter were letters of the Greek alphabet taken from the names of those numbers ("Π" from ''ΠΕΝΤΕ'' for 5), "Δ" from ''ΔΕΚΑ'' for 10, "Η" for 100, etc. (the Greek word for 100 was however ἑκατόν, starting with E); or modified "Π" like "𐅄" for 50 an "𐅅" for 500.
The Attic numerals were later replaced in Greece by the [[Greek numerals|classical Greek system]], that also used letters to denote numbers, like the Romans, and a different set of letters for each power of 10. However, the similarities ended there. The Greek system (apparently borrowed from the late Egyptian [[Hieratic script|Hieratic]] system) uses the first 9 letters of the alphabet to encode the units 1 to 9, then the next 9 letters for the tens 10 to 90, and similarly for the hundreds. (For this purpose an archaic alphabet was used which included additional letters not present in the classical Greek alphabet.)
=== Època preromana i antiga Roma ===
Els nombres romans s'escriuen amb lletres de l'[[Alfabet Romà|alfabet romà]], però originalment provenien de [[Alfabet etrusc|lletres etrusques]] I, Λ, X, Ψ, 8 i ⊕, que utilitzaven per a representar 1, 5, 10, 50, 100 i 1000.
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