Archaeologica.org

Anyone know how the Romans performed the basic maths functions?

Roy.

Nope.

While Roman history is a passion of mine, math is not.

I have to admit that it's a question that has puzzled me for some years Min.

Roy.

Especially with the engineering they accomplished.

That is especially what interested me. The only method I can think of is to use an abacus, but mental calculations must have been impossible.
That the Romans stuck with such a cumbersome system when they were so inventive in other areas I find astonishing.

Roy

What did the Greeks use for math?


(The Romans slavishly copied almost everything Greek.)

Dunno.

Roy.

Hmmm......


http://www.math.tamu.edu/~don.allen/his ... ekorg.html

I am reminded of a Monty Python sketch where the Roman troops were lined up and ordered to number off from the left.
I, II, III, IV, V, VI, etc.
For example how did a farmer count his stock, did he? Or did he knotch a stick?
You can make an abacus with grooves in the ground and some pebbles, but a pocket calculator it ain't!

Roy.

The number of outright impossibilities in History (as concocted in the 1500s by Julius Scalliger & Co. along numerological lines) is legion, and this is a pretty representative example.

The bottom line is that (from memory) around 1200 years of phantom "history" (accounts from other eras reassigned in time) have been inserted into the account between the breakup of the Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire.

Whose conspiracy theory would that be and to what purpose?
Also what has that idea got to do with how they did basic maths?

Roy.

Some of it explained here Min, though I find their apparent inability to conceive of zero odd.

http://www.web40571.clarahost.co.uk/rom ... eywork.htm

Roy.

No one else thought of "0" either....I seem to recall that the Arabs learned it from the Indians and passed it along but I cannot recall where I saw that.

Your question has been bothering me all night. How the hell does one build an aqueduct or the Via Appia without math? Even the Cloaca Maxima (the Great Sewer) seems impossible yet all of these were built before any significant Roman contact even with the Greeks (Via Appia was late 4th century BC).

Just as a random thought, might the Etruscans have figured in to this?

Well as you pointed out Min the Romans were great borrowers so who knows.
I simply can't get my head round the idea of the foreman bawling, 'I said XXIV feet you idiot!'
How did they measure and buy and sell land for example?
They could measure off all sides of an area, if straight, but an abacus seems to be the only means of working out a price for the area, if so the abacus must have been a common tool, and yet it includes the concept of a zero as I understand it.

Roy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Ro ... easurement



We know from their roads that they could not build curves. Roads ran in straight lines and then changed directions by beginning a new straight line. Maybe they did not draw plans? Maybe the engineers were on site and simply directed the work hands-on?

I can see that for a road. An aqueduct or the colosseum seems a bit more daunting.


Nonetheless, I can't recall any mention of an abacus in the literature. As far as I know that was Arabic as well.