How Is Gaios Holy and Good?

Laudator Temporis Acti quotes A Third-Century A.D. Inscription from Eumeneia, adding many interesting comments. Here is one more. The first four lines mean “I Gaius, who am equal in numerical value to two words of awe, make this declaration as a holy and good man.” Since the Greek alphabet was also used to express numbers, and Greek word has a numeric value. Gaios is proud that his name has the same value as the adjectives hágios (‘holy’) and agathós (‘good’). What value? You can do the arithmetic yourself, or you can use my calculator page, Are You the Beast of Revelations?, part of a larger site on ancient numbers, Nvmeri Innvmeri, that also allows you to test how quickly and accurately you can translate randomly-selected numbers from one ancient system to another.