Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/244

224 each case one of the homophonous signs (κ ζ) disappeared from writing. In Rome it can be shown that these were already laid aside when the Twelve Tables were committed to writing. Now when we consider that in the oldest abbreviations the distinction between γ c and κ k is still regularly maintained; that the period, accordingly, when the sounds became in pronunciation coincident, and before that again the period during which the abbreviations became fixed, were far earlier than the origin of the Twelve Tables; and lastly, that a considerable interval must necessarily have elapsed between the introduction of writing and the establishment of a conventional system of abbreviation, we must, both as regards Etruria and Latium, carry back the commencement of the art of writing to an epoch which more closely approximates to the first incidence of the Ægyptian dog-star period within historical times, the year 1322, than to the year 776, with which the chronology of the Olympiads began in Greece. The high antiquity of the art of writing in Rome is evinced otherwise by numerous and plain indications. The existence of documents of the regal period is sufficiently attested; such was the special treaty between Rome and Gabii, which was concluded by a king Tarquinius and probably not by the last of that name, and which, written on the skin of the bullock sacrificed on the occasion, was preserved in the temple of Sancus on the Quirinal, which was rich in antiquities and probably escaped the conflagration of the Gauls; and such was the alliance which King Servius Tullius concluded with Latium, and which Dionysius saw on a copper tablet in the temple of Diana on the Aventine. What he saw, however, was probably a copy restored after the burning with the help of a Latin exemplar, for it is not likely that engraving on metal was practised in the time of the kings. But even then they