Page:Smith - Number Stories of Long ago (1919).djvu/49

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.

HEBREW LETTER-NUMERALS The first ten numerals as learned by Daniel, being the first ten letters of the 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 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.

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 of writing 5 and 500 28