ders
this work to be genuine.[462]

{117}

So little did Gerbert appreciate these numerals that in his works known as
the _Regula de abaco computi_ and the _Libellus_ he makes no use of them at
all, employing only the Roman forms.[463] Nevertheless Bernelinus[464]
refers to the nine [.g]ob[=a]r characters.[465] These Gerbert had marked on
a thousand _jetons_ or counters,[466] using the latter on an abacus which
he had a sign-maker prepare for him.[467] Instead of putting eight counters
in say the tens' column, Gerbert would put a single counter marked 8, and
so for the other places, leaving the column empty where we would place a
zero, but where he, lacking the zero, had no counter to place. These
counters he possibly called _caracteres_, a name which adhered also to the
figures themselves. It is an interesting speculation to consider whether
these _apices_, as they are called in the Boethius interpolations, were in
any way suggested by those Roman jetons generally known in numismatics as
_tesserae_, and bearing the figures I-XVI, the sixteen referring to the
number of _assi_ in a _sestertius_.[468] The {118} name _apices_ adhered to
the Hindu-Arabic numerals until the sixteenth century.[469]

To the figures on the _apices_ were given the names Igin, andras, ormis,
arbas, quimas, calctis or caltis, zenis, temenias, celentis, sipos,[470]
the origin and meaning of which still remain a mystery. The Semitic origin
of several of the words seems probable. _Wahud_, _thaneine_, {119}
_thalata_, _arba_, _kumsa_, _setta_, _sebba_, _timinia_, _taseud_ are given
by the Rev. R. Patrick[471] as the names, in an Arabic dialect used in
Morocco, for the numerals from one to nine. Of these the words for four,
five, and eight are strikingly like those given above.

The name _apices_ was not, however, a common one in later times. _Notae_
was more often used, and it finally gave the name to notation.[472] Still
more common were the names _figures_, _ciphers_, _signs_, _elements_, and
_characters_.[473]

So little effect did the teachings of Gerbert have in making known the new
numerals, that O'Creat, who lived a century later, a friend and pupil of
Adelhard {120} of Bath, used the zero with the Roman characters, in
contrast to Gerbert's use of the [.g]ob[=a]r forms without the zero.[474]
O'Creat uses three forms for zero, o, [=o], and [Greek: t], as in Maximus
Planudes. With this use of the zero goes, naturally, a place value, for he
w