Or is it just non standard to go beyond that large of a number?
In: Mathematics
I don’t know who told you that Roman numerals can’t go beyond 4 million, but it’s not true. (I’m an anthropologist who studied Ancient Rome quite a bit)
There are several records from Ancient Rome that record millions and millions of sestertius, e.g. tax revenue, salaries for the army, sacks of grain from Egypt, tariffs from trade. Etc.
1 billion is simply an ((M)) usually written as an M with two strokes above (called vinculum).
And a note regarding some other comments: I see many “rules” regarding Roman numerals. However many of these supposed rules where actually postulated by mathematicians in the renaissance. So well over 1000 years after the fall of the western Roman Empire. These guys were really bored nerds and didn’t want to accept that classical antiquity wasn’t perfect, so they made up a „perfect“ mathematical system. These are also the guys who thought ancient statues and temples were not painted and were always white. They were wrong about a lot of things. (There are people like this today, who think classical antiquity was all white – if you catch my drift.)
Classical Romans (so between 500BC-500ADish) were not even remotely as strict with mathematical rules as some people think! Some wrote 4 as IV. Some wrote 4 as IIII. You can spot 99 written as IC or as LXXXXVIIII. Famously on the colosseum is a gate XLIIII (44), while just a few hundred meters away near the forum you can find a XXXXIV (44), both from a similar time period.
They also got quite creative. M̅ is million. So you could see stuff like IV ~ M̅ for 4 million. Or IIII • M̅. Or M̅ M̅ M̅ M̅.
So it’s absolutely possible to write 4 million. No one is gonna stop you, especially not a classical Roman.
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