[Allen Tice]

Thank you, Julie. Your earlier PM feedback on Ovid not only inspired me further, but clarified the butter in my mind. Since a big part of this little paper will deal with some surviving material left by a major Catholic saint (St Jerome’s Chronicon) who translated the Greek New Testament into Latin, and whose translation is still consulted today, I will take pains to emphasize that the Chronicon was a secondary or even third level concern to Jerome as compared to his rendering of the New Testament. Even saints who write a universal history must rely on what records are available to them, records that themselves were the product of copying erosion and political pressure at the time they were composed. And Jerome’s Chronicon may have itself suffered copying erosion where Roman numerals were concerned, especially if unusual conventions were used anywhere along the way. When I was teaching math, in some administrative documents it was the common practice to state numbers twice, once using the ten digits from 0 to 9, and once fully spelled out in parentheses. This practice has also been followed in some federal reports. Again, thanks for your presence.