Notes and bibliography - Oxford University Press

habuit, sed quia notata non perscripta erat summa, herede
Tiberio legatum ad quingenta revocante, ne haec quidem
accepit.
Mooney translates (Sue 59):
[Livia Augusta] left him a legacy of fifty million sesterces in
priority to the other legacies; but since this sum was only
marked in figures and not written fully in words, Tiberius,
who was her heir, reduced it to five hundred thousand
sesterces, and even this amount Galba did not receive.
There is considerable confusion at M 28, where 5 x 10 2 x 10 5
= 5 x 10 7 is written as 5 x 10 8 by Menninger (or his English
translator); and where Menninger claims that since the threequarter
frame increased the value of the figure it enclosed by a
factor of 10 5 , Tiberius paid Galba only 500 (= D) sesterces.
Instead it appears that Tiberius agreed to pay him the lordlier
5 x 10 5 sesterces, because he had D read as D, where the bar
increases the value of the symbol it stands over by a factor of
10 3 . So D = 500, D = 500,000 and D = 50,000,000. The threequarter
frame thus indeed increases the value of the symbol it
encloses by a factor of 100,000 = 10 5 . The justification for these
readings lies in Mooney's notes (Sue 204-5):
"Quingenties: sc. 50,000,000 sesterces. Casaubon regarded this
sum as incredibly large, and would read quinquagies, i.e.,