Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/243

Rh alphabet is the further course of its development on Italian soil: perhaps it is even of more importance; for by means of it a gleam of light is thrown upon the inland commerce of Italy, which is involved in far greater darkness than the commerce with foreigners on its coast. In the earliest epoch of the Etruscan alphabet, when it was used without material alteration as it had been introduced, its use appears to have been restricted to the Etruscans on the Po and in what is now Tuscany. In course of time this alphabet, manifestly diffusing itself from Hatria and Spina, reached southward along the east coast as far as the Abruzzi, northward to the Veneti and subsequently even to the Celts at the foot of, amidst, and indeed beyond the Alps, so that its last offshoots reached as far as the Tyrol and Stvria. The more recent epoch started with a reform of the alphabet, the chief features of which were the introduction of writing in interrupted lines, the suppression of the o, which was no longer distinguished in pronunciation from the u, and the introduction of a new letter f, for which the alphabet as received by them had no corresponding sign. This reform evidently arose among the western Etruscans, and while it did not find reception beyond the Apennines, became naturalized among all the Sabellian tribes, and especially among the Umbrians. In its further course the alphabet experienced various fortunes in connection with the several of the Etruscans on the Arno and around Capua, the Umbrians, and the Samnites; frequently the mediæ were entirely or partially lost, while elsewhere again new vowels and consonants were developed. But that west-Etruscan reform of the alphabet is not merely as old as the oldest tombs found in Etruria; it is considerably older, for the syllabarium just mentioned as found probably in one of these tombs, already presents the reformed alphabet in an essentially modified and modernized shape; and, as the reformed alphabet itself is relatively recent as compared with the primitive one, the mind almost fails in the effort to reach back to the time when that alphabet came to Italy.

While the Etruscans thus appear as the instruments in diffusing the alphabet in the north, east, and south of the peninsula, the Latin alphabet again was confined to Latium, and maintained its ground there, with, upon the whole, but few alterations; only the letters γ κ and ζ σ gradually became coincident in sound, the consequence of which was, that in