1907-8.] 
A. Note on the Roman Numerals. 
181 
/% Thus, just as primitive races, employing 
AjA ur /Va a very rudimentary body -notation, stopped 
' ' at twenty and called the result “man” 
(p. 172), -j* and for a hundred said “five 
men” (p. 172), so the inventors of this 
system, employing a highly developed 
body-notation, reached one thousand and 
graphically denoted the same by a modi- 
fied form of the symbol for “ man.” 
The divergent forms which the sign for 1000 assumed have been 
exemplified above, as < 1 > [XI CX} CXO Cl D ffl (p. 165; 
for the transition to M see p. 168), though, indeed, they were innumer- 
able. I And, while they exhibit a suggestive resemblance to the “ man ” 
sign, their very number and variety show that originally they were 
not copies of a precise design, whether an alphabetic character or a 
particular combination of decussating lines, but conventional ideographs 
of a familiar object which admitted of varied representation — the 
human body. 
An interesting point may here be stated. The sudden morphological 
termination of the Roman system at the sign for 1000 has not been, and 
cannot be, accounted for on either of the preceding hypotheses. The 
pictograpliic method, on the other hand, provides an obvious explanation 
of this surprising fact. The system , as regards its form, terminated with 
the sign for 1000, because no further gesture was practicable. Its further 
extension, ingenious as regards its construction, but cumbrous and im- 
practicable as regards its form, represents merely the consistent employment 
of the signs and methods derived from the original body-notation. Those 
* I. Evans, op. cit., p. 338 ; cf. pp. 297, 302, 34] . II. Clodd, op. cit., pp. 59, 70 ; 
cf. pp. 36, 66, 67, 72. 
t The following passage supports our hypothesis in a remarkable way : — “ If we pass 
from the rude Greenlanders to the comparatively civilised Aztecs, we shall find on the 
northern as on the southern continent traces of early finger-numeration surviving among 
higher races. The Mexican names for the first four numerals are as obscure in etymology 
as our own. But when we come to 5 we find this expressed by macuilli ; and as ma (ma-itl) 
means ‘ hand, 5 and cuiloa ‘ to paint or depict, 5 it is likely that the word for 5 may have 
meant something like ‘hand-depicting. 5 In 10, matladli, the word ma, ‘hand, 5 appears 
again, while tlactli means half, and is represented in the Mexican picture-writings by the figure 
of half a man from the waist upward; thus it appears that the Aztec 10 means the ‘hand- 
half 5 of a man, just as among the Towka Indians of South America 10 is expressed as ‘ half 
a man, 5 a whole man being 20. When the Aztecs reach 20 they call it cempoalli , ‘one 
counting, 5 with evidently the same meaning as elsewhere — one whole man, fingers and toes. 55 
— Tylor, Primitive Culture, 4th ed., London, 1903, i. p. 249. 
+ “ . . . Das romische [Zeichen fur 1000], das in unzahligen Variationen die aus- 
gebreitetste Anwendung gefunden hat. 55 — Mommsen, Die unteritalischen Dialekte , p. 34. 
