Description
Each unit (1, 2, …, 9) was assigned a separate letter, each tens (10, 20, …, 90) a separate letter, and each hundreds (100, 200, …, 900) a separate letter. This requires 27 letters, so the 24-letter Greek alphabet was extended by using three obsolete letters: digamma ϝ for 6, qoppa ϟ for 90, and sampi ϡ for 900. Digamma is today most often written in its modern form ϛ, which is also called stigma; in Greece it is often replaced by the letter combination στ/ΣΤ. To distinguish numerals from letters they are followed in modern print by the keraia (Greek κεραία, "hornlike projection"), a symbol ( ʹ ) similar to an acute sign ( ´ ) but with its own Unicode character (U+0374). In ancient and medieval manuscripts, number signs were written with a horizontal line above.
This alphabetic system operates on the additive principle in which the numeric values of the letters are added together to form the total. For example, 241 is represented as σμαʹ (200 + 40 + 1). A famous example is 666 (the number of the Beast), which is represented as χξϛʹ (600 + 60 + 6) in medieval manuscripts of the Book of Revelation.
To represent numbers from 1,000 to 999,999 the same letters are reused to serve as thousands, tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands. A "left keraia" (Unicode U+0375, ‘Greek Lower Numeral Sign’) is put in front of thousands to distinguish them from the standard use. For example, 2011 is represented as ͵βιαʹ (2000 + 10 + 1).
| Letter | Value | Letter | Value | Letter | Value | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| αʹ | 1 | ιʹ | 10 | ρʹ | 100 | ||
| βʹ | 2 | κʹ | 20 | σʹ | 200 | ||
| γʹ | 3 | λʹ | 30 | τʹ | 300 | ||
| δʹ | 4 | μʹ | 40 | υʹ | 400 | ||
| εʹ | 5 | νʹ | 50 | φʹ | 500 | ||
| ϝʹ or ϛʹ or στʹ | 6 | ξʹ | 60 | χʹ | 600 | ||
| ζʹ | 7 | οʹ | 70 | ψʹ | 700 | ||
| ηʹ | 8 | πʹ | 80 | ωʹ | 800 | ||
| θʹ | 9 | ϟʹ | 90 | ϡʹ | 900 |
In modern Greek, uppercase letters are preferred, as in Φίλιππος Βʹ = Philip II.
Read more about this topic: Greek Numerals
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“I was here first introduced to Joe.... He was a good-looking Indian, twenty-four years old, apparently of unmixed blood, short and stout, with a broad face and reddish complexion, and eyes, methinks, narrower and more turned up at the outer corners than ours, answering to the description of his race. Besides his underclothing, he wore a red flannel shirt, woolen pants, and a black Kossuth hat, the ordinary dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the Penobscot Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A sound mind in a sound body, is a short, but full description of a happy state in this World: he that has these two, has little more to wish for; and he that wants either of them, will be little the better for anything else.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)
“The type of fig leaf which each culture employs to cover its social taboos offers a twofold description of its morality. It reveals that certain unacknowledged behavior exists and it suggests the form that such behavior takes.”
—Freda Adler (b. 1934)