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The single step that would then remain to be taken is the decisive one the introduction of the coin equivalent to one-tenth of a florin, accompanied by the withdrawal of the representatives of duodecimal division, and a legislative enactment that all accounts kept in public offices, or rendered in private transactions, should be in the decimal denominations.
"Yes, yes, I know," said King Philip impatiently, "I have heard it a thousand times! It has already persuaded me to abandon the duodecimal method and to consign to the severest tortures any one who mentions it in my presence again. My ten fingers are good enough for me. Go on, go on!"
The consistent duodecimal development of this idea appears to have belonged to the Italian nation, and to have preceded the first contact with the Greeks. Hellenic Measures in Italy
Other traces of the pure decimal system occur but sparingly in this field; among them are the -versus-, the Sabellian measure of surface of 100 square feet, and the Roman year of 10 months. The Duodecimal System The very earliest Latin priesthoods, the colleges of the Salii and Arvales, as well as the leagues of the Etruscan cities, were organized on the basis of the number twelve.
I may add, before I quit this subject, that the Martial system of arithmetic differs from ours principally in the use of a duodecimal instead of a decimal basis. The central square of a line represents the unit's place, and is marked by a line drawn above it. Thus a figure answering to our I, if placed in the fourth square to the left, represents 1728.
If we inquire into the basis of the duodecimal system and consider how it can have happened that, in addition to ten, twelve should have been so early and universally singled out from the equal series of numbers, we shall probably be able to find no other source to which it can be referred than a comparison of the solar and lunar periods.
Thus the zodiac was divided into twelve signs which astronomers of all subsequent times have continued to recognize; and the duodecimal system of counting took precedence with the Babylonian mathematicians over the more primitive and, as it seems to us, more satisfactory decimal system.
The hieroglyphic writing had passed through all its stages of formation; its principles had become ascertained and settled long before we gain the first glimpse of it; the decimal and duodecimal systems of arithmetic were in use; the arts necessary in hydraulic engineering, massive architecture, and the ascertainment of the boundaries of land, had reached no insignificant degree of perfection.
He himself remains midway between the last fall and the next spring; and perhaps he decides against the writer, as the perverse reader sometimes will, and holds that this hour of suspense and misgiving is the supreme, the duodecimal hour of the metropolitan dial. He may be right; who knows?
The cubit of 525 millimetres was the base of the whole system. We shall not here attempt to explain how the other measures itinerary, agrarian, of capacity, of weight were derived from the cubit; to call attention to the traces left in our nomenclature by the duodecimal or sexagesimal system of the Babylonians, even after the complete triumph of the decimal system, is sufficient for our purposes.
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