Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/241

Rh them selves, although we may discover a first attempt at such a development in the Italian numeral signs, and possibly also in the primitive Italian custom (formed independently of Hellenic influence) of drawing lots by means of wooden tablets. The difficulty which must have attended the first individualizing of sounds, occurring as they do in so great a variety of combinations, is best demonstrated by the fact that a single alphabet propagated from people to people and from generation to generation has sufficed, and still suffices, for the whole of Aramaic, Indian, Græco-Roman, and modern civilization. This most important product of the human intellect was the joint creation of the Aramæans and Indo-Germans. The Semitic family of languages, in which vowels have a subordinate character and never can begin a word, presented special facilities for the individualizing of the consonants; and it was among the Semites accordingly that the first alphabet (in which the vowels were wanting) was invented. It was the Indians and Greeks that first independently of each other and by very divergent methods created, out of the Aramæan consonantal writing introduced among them by commerce, a complete alphabet by the addition of vowels, and the marking of the syllable instead of the mere consonant, or, as Palamedes says in Euripides,

This Aramæo-Hellenic alphabet was introduced among the Italians at a very early period; but not until it had already experienced an important development in Greece, and had been subjected to various reforms, particularly the addition of three new letters ξ, φ, χ, and the alteration of the signs for γ, ι, λ (P. 144, note). We have also already observed (P. 209) that two different Greek alphabets reached Italy, one with a double sign for s (Sigma s, and San sh) and a single sign for k and with the earlier form of the r (Ρ) coining to Etruria, the second with a single sign for s and a double sign for k (Kappa k, and Koppa q), and the more recent form of the r (R) coming to Latium. The oldest Etruscan writing shows no knowledge of lines, and winds like the coiling of a snake; the more recent employs parallel broken off lines from right to left: the Latin