IIRC the abacus as we know it was a Chinese thing?

Anywho: it would not really have worked very well with the Roman/Latin numeral system; theirs' is one of the worst imaginable. Mostly because they rely on elementary math to denote elements of the outcome of elementary math.

I'd take the Fibonnaci numeral system, or the binary one over the Roman one any day.

(Incidentally if you were interested: the binary system is exceedingly useful to solve problems of the kind known as 'The Josephus Problem' - basically it boils down to simple binary shifts.)