NUMBER STORIES
If Hippias wished to write a number like 2977, he had to use fifteen Greek letters, so you see that arithmetic must have been much harder for the Greek boys than it is for us.
GREEK NUMERALS
The Greek numerals for 1, 5, 10, 100, and 1000 as Hippias wrote them on parchment
As the years went on there came a time when people felt the need of some easier way of writing numbers for use in the shops. of Athens. So it came to pass that another little Hippias, not long before the days when
NUMBER WRITTEN IN GREEK
This is the way that Hippias wrote the number 2977
Paul preached at Athens nearly two thousand years ago, wrote on his parchment roll the letters of the Greek alphabet to represent numbers. The Greek name for the first letter was alpha ( l'fa), and the second letter had
OF LONG AGO
the name beta (b 't ). When Hippias learned his A B C's he learned his alpha-betas, and from this name we get our word " alphabet. While Hippias was learning to write numbers in Athens, a boy named Daniel was living on the slope of the Mount of Olives. This boy went daily to Jerusalem with fruit which his father sold in the market place. He
A ' B'T'A ' E F' Z' H' O' I'
GREEK LETTER-NUMERALS
The first ten numbers as the Greeks represented them by letters about two thousand years ago. For larger numbers they used other letters : K' for 20, A ' for 30, and so on. They placed a mark(/or') by each letter to show that it stood for a number needed to know how to write numbers, for the prices of the melons and figs were written on small boards and put upon his father's fruit stall. It was for this reason that Daniel's father taught him the smaller numbers that everyone needed to know. In those days, however, a man would work for a penny a day, and so most people had little need for numbers higher than ten, and numbers above a few thousand were rarely used by anyone.
NUMBER STORIES
The numerals which Daniel learned were only the first few letters of the Hebrew alphabet, just as those learned by Hippias were the first few letters of the Greek alphabet.
EX
HEBREW LETTER-NUMERALS
The first ten numerals as learned by Daniel, being the first ten letters ofthe Hebrew alphabet. They read from right to left, the Hebrew language being written in that way
You can see that such a way of writing numbers must have made multiplication and division very hard.
While Hippias was playing in the streets of Athens, and Daniel was carrying fruit from
IVAX OGDO
EARLY ROMAN NUMERALS
These nine characters represent the numbers 1, 5, 5, 10, 50, 100, 500, 500, and 1000 as written by the early Romans. Notice the two ways ofwriting 5 and 500
the Mount of Olives to Jerusalem, Titus was playing about the streets of Rome and attending a school near the great forum of the city.