The Alphabet in European Greece, 800 B.C.

       The European Greeks are not included in the preceding paragraph, simply because there are no means of proving that they had the use of letters in the tenth century B.C. The probability, however, is that they were not far behind their brethren in Asia Minor. The variations in the forms of some of the letters of the Greek alphabet which are found in inscriptions at different places both in Asia Minor and in Greece, are attributable to local fashions and to the fact that the script was not built up all at once from a single model. It is here that the tradition about Cadmus has its chief significance; for there can be little doubt that the alphabet of Tyre, not quite identical with its elder Aramaic sister, had some immediate influence in modifying the forms borrowed by the Boeotians from the lonians. The older Greek alphabet has been already mentioned. It was found after a while to be both insufficient and more than sufficient. The Tsade (ts) and Koppa (q) were not needed in Greek, and were only retained formally as numerals. As most Greek organs could only give the same sound (s) to both the simklia and the shen (which they called sigma and san), one of the two names was superfluous. So they kept the symbol for shen as an s, but transferred to it the name of the simkha. The symbol of the latter they retained in its place, but sounded it as ks, and called it Ksi, a name which did not badly suit the original Semitic sound of the letter which was like hs rather than s. The unaspirated He they called mere E (E psilon) ; to the aspirated Heta, they left its name, but regarded it as aspirated E. Its original Semitic value as an aspirate (adaptable to any vowel) was not wholly lost sight of, and this   The necessity of making aspirated letters led to the prefixing or over-writing of the ff, at first in its full to avoid confusion with Eta) in small, then in half shape, thus [-. This custom produced its complement in the shape of -| , to mark the soft breathing; until in the eleventh century of our era, the two breathings were worn down into semicircular form, thus C , 3. Another rejected symbol was the van, formed like the letter F and sounded like our V. It dropped out of usage, and they forgot its name, although it had been considerably used by the old poets, in connexion with whom it is usually named digamma, because of its resemblance to a double gamma, or one gamma superimposed on another. It was found necessary to have a character for u, and advantageous to use single symbols for double letters frequently occurring, such as ph, kh, ps and oo (long o). The old Eastern form of vau supplied the u ; in fact, having dropped the letter as a consonant out of its sixth place in the alphabet, they put it in its vowel-character at the end. The symbol of the discarded koppa was used for the Ph, which was not equivalent in sound to our ph, but must have resembled the German pf. The discarded tsada (a trident) was used to represent, in some places ps, in others M, but finally the symbol fell into two distinct forms, by being written upright as + (\^) and leaning side wise as x (x). By the time of Herodotus the Greek alphabet may be considered as having reached exactly its present form in capital letters. The cursive hand which must have existed at all times of Greek writing was simply a rapid deformation of the capitals, and consequently did not attain to any uniformly distinctive character till much later. The general use of minuscules in any such uniform type is always referred to the eighth century after Christ, but really there is no essential change of form between the cursive letters a hundred years before Christ and those of a thousand years after Christ. The chief difference is in the greater freedom and fluency of the late letters, an air of practiced familiarity which is lacking in the earlier cursive.

Index 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, You Are Reading Chapter 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34 chapters

Plates: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22