From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Mon Oct 02 1995 - 17:59:34 EDT
At 3:57 PM 10/2/95, Mari Olsen wrote:
>What I'm wondering is this: is it true that Greek had no numerals?
>Jim can't remember one way or another, and I can't find my Greek
>textbook.
I learned cardinals, hEIS/MIA/hEN, DUW, TREIS, TETTARES/TETTARA; PENTE,
hEKS, hEPTA, OKTW, ENNEA, DEKA, hENDEKA, KTL. and ordinals,PRWTOS,
DEUTEROS, TRITOS, TETARTOS, and er ..., er ... At any rate, yes, there
certainly were numerals in Greek--and in Latin too. Both Greeks and Romans
certainly used letters as numeral digits (even retaining some old letters
as numeral digits that had lost their function in a phonetic alphabet).
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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