Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/242

222 writing, as far as our monuments reach back, exhibits only the latter form of parallel lines, which originally perhaps may have run at pleasure from left to right or from right to left, but subsequently ran among the Romans in the former, and among the Faliscans in the latter direction. Respecting the origin of the Etruscan alphabet this much only can be with certainty affirmed, that it cannot have been brought to Etruria from Corcyra or Corinth, or even from the Sicilian Dorians; the most probable hypothesis is that it was derived from the old Attic alphabet, which appears to have dropped the koppa earlier than any other in Greece. As little can we determine with precision whether the Tuscan alphabet spread over Etruria from Spina or from Cære, although the probabilities are in favour of the latter very ancient emporium of traffic and civilization.

The derivation on the other hand of the Latin alphabet from that of the Cumæan and Sicilian Greeks is quite evident; and it is even very probable that the Latins did not receive the alphabet once for all, as was the case in Etruria, but in consequence of their lively intercourse with Sicily kept pace for a considerable period with the alphabet in use there, and followed its variations. We find, for instance, that the earlier forms Σ and were not unknown to the Romans, but were superseded in common use by the later forms  and —a circumstance which can only be explained by supposing that the Latins employed for a considerable period the Greek alphabet, as such, in writing either their mother-tongue or Greek. It is dangerous therefore to draw from the more recent character of the Greek alphabet which we meet with in Rome, as compared with that brought to Etruria, the inference that writing was practised earlier in Etruria than in Rome.

The powerful impression produced by the acquisition of the treasure of letters on those who received them, and the vividness with which they realized the power that slumbered in those humble signs, are illustrated by a remarkable vase from one of the oldest tombs of Cære (built before the invention of the arch), exhibiting the alphabet after the old Greek model as it came to Etruria, and also an Etruscan syllabarium formed from it, which may be compared to that of Palamedes—evidently a sacred relic of the introduction and acclimatization of alphabetic writing in Etruria.

Not less important for history than the derivation of the