roman numerals was RE: [Northkeep] Former Officers

Deborah Sweet/soc/cas/Okstate dssweet at okstate.edu
Mon Dec 3 10:45:35 PST 2001


Maidenhair, scratching his head in great annoyance said:
>well the old sagas have that wonderful
>xxvi or xxx etc..... so i haven't a clue to the years.  some of them have
it
>on the inside cover some do not.
>give me a bit of help here
>x=10
>v=5
>i=1

That's correct so far as you're going. So your example above of:

xxvi would read 10 + 10 + 5 + 1 = 26 and xxx = (10 + 10 + 10) = 30

The trick comes with the numbers 4 & 9. They are usually represented by
subtraction (the i character stands to the left of either the v or x):

iv is 4 and ix is nine.

In a couple of three years we will be needing another symbol: C for 50. So
XC is 40.

All those year dates on the local newsletters are usually rendered into
the AS year (Anno Societas). So in order to attempt to figure out when
that particular newsletter was published in the common reckoning, you need
to know what AS year it currently is in the SCA. And you need to remember
just when the new year changes in the SCA - May 1. So right now it's XXXVI
AS (1 May 2001 - 30 April 2002).

However, I must also state this caveat that I have gone spelunking in the
past editions of Mooneschadowes newsletters, and discovered that several
chroniclers did not know *when* the year changed for the AS reckoning, and
so they changed it when January 1 rolled around.

Doing a web search on "roman numerals" will result in many pages that are
probably more informative than the above and you can even find pages that
will translate from roman numerals to arabic numerals and vice versa.

Estrill

ps - yeah, I just saw Etienne's response but decided to post this anyway.
Ya'll notice it's the herald types that are answering this question.




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