BOOK I.

two hundred and sixty-seven thousand millions, eight hundred and ninety-two thousands, three hundred and sixty-seven thousand, four hundred and twenty-five. Let there be proposed again, for the sake of explaining the matter, this number of eleven marks, to be uttered. It

A diagram shows numerical tables with place values separated by vertical bars:

| 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| 43 | 267 | 892 | 367 | 425 |

is distinguished into four parts by three commas. In the first of these parts, the triad holds the first place; the monad the second, which is worth ten there; the circle the third. Since it is nothing, this part produces no more than thirteen. In the first and second place of the following part, which the first and second comma enclose, there are marks of nothing; but in the third is the quaternary, where it signifies four hundred. In the first place of the third part is the quinary; in the others, figures of nothing. Wherefore these three marks placed between the second and third comma render only five. Finally, after the last comma, there are only two marks; the former of which is the senary, and the other is the monad. This refers to ten here; the other, in the more dexterous place, to six. The Latins said sixteen, but—if I may say so with their permission—less correctly. For they inverted the natural order of the number, just as the Greeks did. For nature demands, if I am not mistaken, that the larger part of the number be brought forward before the smaller, just as the article before the digit, as ten before two; and the larger article before the smaller, as a hundred before twenty.