Measuring and Writing
The art of measuring brings the world into subjection to man;
the art of writing prevents his knowledge from perishing along
with himself; together they make man--what nature has not made
him--all-powerful and eternal. It is the privilege and duty of
history to trace the course of national progress along these paths
also.
Italian Measures
Measurement necessarily presupposes the development of the several
ideas of units of time, of space, and of weight, and of a whole
consisting of equal parts, or in other words of number and of
a numeral system. The most obvious bases presented by nature for
this purpose are, in reference to time, the periodic returns of
the sun and moon, or the day and the month; in reference to space,
the length of the human foot, which is more easily applied in
measuring than the arm; in reference to gravity, the burden which
a man is able to poise (-librare-) on his hand while he holds
his arm stretched out, or the "weight" (-libra-). As a basis for
the notion of a whole made up of equal parts, nothing so readily
suggests itself as the hand with its five, or the hands with their
ten, fingers; upon this rests the decimal system. We have already
observed that these elements of all numeration and measuring
reach back not merely beyond the separation of the Greek and Latin
stocks, but even to the most remote primeval times. The antiquity
in particular of the measurement of time by the moon is demonstrated
by language;(1) even the mode of reckoning the days that elapse
between the several phases of the moon, not forward from the phase
on which it had entered last, but backward from that which was
next to be expected, is at least older than the separation of the
Greeks and Latins.
Decimal System
The most definite evidence of the antiquity and original exclusive
use of the decimal system among the Indo-Germans is furnished by
the well-known agreement of all Indo-Germanic languages in respect
to the numerals as far as a hundred inclusive.(2) In the case of
Italy the decimal system pervaded all the earliest arrangements: it
may be sufficient to recall the number ten so usual in the case of
witnesses, securities, envoys, and magistrates, the legal equivalence
of one ox and ten sheep, the partition of the canton into ten curies
and the pervading application generally of the decurial system, the
-limitatio-, the tenth in offerings and in agriculture, decimation,
and the praenomen -Decimus-. Among the applications of this most
ancient decimal system in the sphere of measuring and of writing,
the remarkable Italian ciphers claim a primary place. When the Greeks
and Italians separated, there were still evidently no conventional
signs of number. On the other hand we find the three oldest and
most indispensable numerals, one, five, and ten, represented by
three signs--I, V or /\, X, manifestly imitations of the outstretched
finger, and the open hand single and double--which were not derived
either from the Hellenes or the Phoenicians, but were common to
the Romans, Sabellians, and Etruscans. They were the first steps
towards the formation of a national Italian writing, and at the same
time evidences of the liveliness of that earlier inland intercourse
among the Italians which preceded their transmarine commerce.(3)
Which of the Italian stocks invented, and which of them borrowed,
these signs, can of course no longer be ascertained. Other traces
of the pure decimal system occur but sparingly in this field;
among them are the -versus-, the Sabellian measure of surface of
100 square feet,(4) and the Roman year of 10 months.
The Duodecimal System
Otherwise generally in the case of those Italian measures, which
were not connected with Greek standards and were probably developed
by the Italians before they came into contact with the Greeks, there
prevailed the partition of the "whole" (-as-) into twelve "units"
(-unciae-). The very earliest Latin priesthoods, the colleges of
the Salii and Arvales,(5) as well as the leagues of the Etruscan
cities, were organized on the basis of the number twelve. The
same number predominated in the Roman system of weights and in the
measures of length, where the pound (-libra-) and the foot (-pes-)
were usually subdivided into twelve parts; the unit of the Roman
measures of surface was the "driving" (-actus-) of 120 square feet,
a combination of the decimal and duodecimal systems.(6) Similar
arrangements as to the measures of capacity may have passed into
oblivion.
If we inquire into the basis of the duodecimal system and consider
how it can have happened that, in addition to ten, twelve should
have been so early and universally singled out from the equal series
of numbers, we shall probably be able to find no other source to
which it can be referred than a comparison of the solar and lunar
periods. Still more than the double hand of ten fingers did the
solar cycle of nearly twelve lunar periods first suggest to man
the profound conception of an unit composed of equal units, and
thereby originate the idea of a system of numbers, the first step
towards mathematical thought. The consistent duodecimal development
of this idea appears to have belonged to the Italian nation, and
to have preceded the first contact with the Greeks.
Hellenic Measures in Italy
But when at length the Hellenic trader had opened up the route to
the west coast of Italy, the measures of surface remained unaffected,
but the measures of length, of weight, and above all of capacity--in
other words those definite standards without which barter and traffic
are impossible--experienced the effects of the new international
intercourse. The oldest Roman foot has disappeared; that which we
know, and which was in use at a very early period among the Romans,
was borrowed from Greece, and was, in addition to its new Roman
subdivision into twelfths, divided after the Greek fashion into four
hand-breadths (-palmus-) and sixteen finger-breadths (-digitus-).
Further, the Roman weights were brought into a fixed proportional
relation to the Attic system, which prevailed throughout Sicily
but not in Cumae--another significant proof that the Latin traffic
was chiefly directed to the island; four Roman pounds were assumed as
equal to three Attic -minae-, or rather the Roman pound was assumed
as equal to one and a half of the Sicilian -litrae- or half-minae.(7)
But the most singular and chequered aspect is presented by the
Roman measures of capacity, as regards both their names and their
proportions. Their names have come from the Greek terms either by
corruption (-amphora-, -modius- after --medimnos--, -congius- from
--choeus--, -hemina-, -cyathus-) or by translation (-acetabulum-from
--ozubaphon--); while conversely --zesteis-- is a corruption of
-sextarius-. All the measures are not identical, but those in most
common use are so; among liquid measures the -congius- or -chus-,
the -sextarius-, and the -cyathus-, the two last also for dry
goods; the Roman -amphora- was equalized in water-weight to the
Attic talent, and at the same time stood to the Greek --metretes--
in the fixed ratio of 3:2, and to the Greek --medimnos-- of 2:1. To
one who can decipher the significance of such records, these names
and numerical proportions fully reveal the activity and importance
of the intercourse between the Sicilians and the Latins. The Greek
numeral signs were not adopted; but the Roman probably availed
himself of the Greek alphabet, when it reached him, to form ciphers
for 50 and 1000, perhaps also for 100, out of the signs for the
three aspirated letters which he had no use for. In Etruria the
sign for 100 at least appears to have been obtained in a similar
way. Afterwards, as usually happens, the systems of notation among
the two neighbouring nations became assimilated by the adoption in
substance of the Roman system in Etruria.
The Italian Calendar before the Period of Greek Influence in Italy
In like manner the Roman calendar--and probably that of the Italians
generally--began with an independent development of its own, but
subsequently came under the influence of the Greeks. In the division
of time the returns of sunrise and sunset, and of the new and full
moon, most directly arrest the attention of man; and accordingly
the day and the month, determined not by cyclic calculation but
by direct observation, were long the exclusive measures of time.
Down to a late age sunrise and sunset were proclaimed in the Roman
market-place by the public crier, and in like manner it may be
presumed that in earlier times, at each of the four phases of the
moon, the number of days that would elapse from that phase until
the next was proclaimed by the priests. The mode of reckoning
therefore in Latium--and the like mode, it may be presumed, was in
use not merely among the Sabellians, but also among the Etruscans--was
by days, which, as already mentioned, were counted not forward
from the phase that had last occurred, but backward from that which
was next expected; by lunar weeks, which varied in length between
7 and 8 days, the average length being 7 3/8; and by lunar months
which in like manner were sometimes of 29, sometimes of 30 days,
the average duration of the synodical month being 29 days 12 hours
44 minutes. For some time the day continued to be among the Italians
the smallest, and the month the largest, division of time. It was
not until afterwards that they began to distribute day and night
respectively into four portions, and it was much later still when
they began to employ the division into hours; which explains why
even stocks otherwise closely related differed in their mode of
fixing the commencement of day, the Romans placing it at midnight,
the Sabellians and the Etruscans at noon. No calendar of the year
had, at least when the Greeks separated from the Italians, as yet
been organized, for the names for the year and its divisions in the
two languages have been formed quite independently of each other.
Nevertheless the Italians appear to have already in the pre-Hellenic
period advanced, if not to the arrangement of a fixed calendar,
at any rate to the institution of two larger units of time. The
simplifying of the reckoning according to lunar months by the
application of the decimal system, which was usual among the Romans,
and the designation of a term of ten months as a "ring" (-annus-)
or complete year, bear in them all the traces of a high antiquity.
Later, but still at a period very early and undoubtedly previous
to the operation of Greek influences, the duodecimal system (as
we have already stated) was developed in Italy, and, as it derived
its very origin from the observation of the fact that the solar
period was equal to twelve lunar periods, it was certainly applied
in the first instance to the reckoning of time. This view accords
with the fact that the individual names of the months--which can
only have originated after the month was viewed as part of a solar
year--particularly those of March and of May, were similar among
the different branches of the Italian stock, while there was
no similarity between the Italian names and the Greek. It is not
improbable therefore that the problem of laying down a practical
calendar which should correspond at once to the moon and the sun--a
problem which may be compared in some sense to the quadrature of the
circle, and the solution of which was only recognized as impossible
and abandoned after the lapse of many centuries--had already employed
the minds of men in Italy before the epoch at which their contact
with the Greeks began; these purely national attempts to solve it,
however, have passed into oblivion.
The Oldest Italo-Greek Calendar
What we know of the oldest calendar of Rome and of some other Latin
cities--as to the Sabellian and Etruscan measurement of time we
have no traditional information--is decidedly based on the oldest
Greek arrangement of the year, which was intended to answer both
to the phases of the moon and to the seasons of the solar year,
constructed on the assumption of a lunar period of 29 1/2 days and
a solar period of 12 1/2 lunar months or 368 3/4 days, and on the
regular alternation of a full month or month of thirty days with a
hollow month or month of twenty-nine days and of a year of twelve
with a year of thirteen months, but at the same time maintained
in some sort of harmony with the actual celestial phenomena by
arbitrary curtailments and intercalations. It is possible that
this Greek arrangement of the year in the first instance came into
use among the Latins without undergoing any alteration; but the
oldest form of the Roman year which can be historically recognized
varied from its model, not indeed in the cyclical result nor yet in
the alternation of years of twelve with years of thirteen months,
but materially in the designation and in the measuring off of the
individual months. The Roman year began with the beginning of
spring; the first month in it and the only one which bears the name
of a god, was named from Mars (-Martius-), the three following from
sprouting (-aprilis-) growing (-maius-), and thriving (-iunius-),
the fifth onward to the tenth from their ordinal numbers (-quinctilis-,
-sextilis-, -september-, -october-, -november-, -december), the
eleventh from commencing (-ianuarius-),(8) with reference presumably
to the renewal of agricultural operations that followed midwinter
and the season of rest, the twelfth, and in an ordinary year the
last, from cleansing (-februarius-). To this series recurring
in regular succession there was added in the intercalary year a
nameless "labour-month" (-mercedonius-) at the close of the year,
viz. after February. And, as the Roman calendar was independent
as respected the names of the months which were probably taken from
the old national ones, it was also independent as regarded their
duration. Instead of the four years of the Greek cycle, each
composed of six months of 30 and six of 29 days and an intercalary
month inserted every second year alternately of 29 and 30 days (354 +
384 + 354 + 383 = 1475 days), the Roman calendar substituted four
years, each containing four months--the first, third, fifth, and
eighth--of 31 days and seven of 29 days, with a February of 28
days during three years and of 29 in the fourth, and an intercalary
month of 27 days inserted every second year (355 + 383 + 355 +
382 = 1475 days). In like manner this calendar departed from the
original division of the month into four weeks, sometimes of 7,
sometimes of 8 days; it made the eight-day-week run on through the
years without regard to the other relations of the calendar, as our
Sundays do, and placed the weekly market on the day with which it
began (-noundinae-). Along with this it once for all fixed the
first quarter in the months of 31 days on the seventh, in those
of 29 on the fifth day, and the full moon in the former on the
fifteenth, in the latter on the thirteenth day. As the course of
the months was thus permanently arranged, it was henceforth necessary
to proclaim only the number of days lying between the new moon and
the first quarter; thence the day of the newmoon received the name
of "proclamation-day" (-kalendae-). The first day of the second
section of the month, uniformly of 8 days, was--in conformity with
the Roman custom of reckoning, which included the -terminus ad
quem- --designated as "nine-day" (-nonae-). The day of the full
moon retained the old name of -idus- (perhaps "dividing-day").
The motive lying at the bottom of this strange remodelling of the
calendar seems chiefly to have been a belief in the salutary virtue
of odd numbers;(9) and while in general it is based on the oldest
form of the Greek year, its variations from that form distinctly
exhibit the influence of the doctrines of Pythagoras, which were
then paramount in Lower Italy, and which especially turned upon a
mystic view of numbers. But the consequence was that this Roman
calendar, clearly as it bears traces of the desire that it should
harmonize with the course both of sun and moon, in reality by
no means so corresponded with the lunar course as did at least on
the whole its Greek model, while, like the oldest Greek cycle, it
could only follow the solar seasons by means of frequent arbitrary
excisions, and did in all probability follow them but very imperfectly,
for it is scarcely likely that the calendar would be handled with
greater skill than was manifested in its original arrangement.
The retention moreover of the reckoning by months or--which is the
same thing--by years of ten months implies a tacit, but not to be
misunderstood, confession of the irregularity and untrustworthiness
of the oldest Roman solar year. This Roman calendar may be regarded,
at least in its essential features, as that generally current
among the Latins. When we consider how generally the beginning of
the year and the names of the months are liable to change, minor
variations in the numbering and designations are quite compatible
with the hypothesis of a common basis; and with such a calendar-system,
which practically was irrespective of the lunar course, the Latins
might easily come to have their months of arbitrary length, possibly
marked off by annual festivals--as in the case of the Alban months,
which varied between 16 and 36 days. It would appear probable
therefore that the Greek --trieteris-- had early been introduced
from Lower Italy at least into Latium and perhaps also among the
other Italian stocks, and had thereafter been subjected in the
calendars of the several cities to further subordinate alterations.
For the measuring of periods of more than one year the regnal years
of the kings might have been employed: but it is doubtful whether
that method of dating, which was in use in the East, occurred in Greece
or Italy during earlier times. On the other hand the intercalary
period recurring every four years, and the census and lustration
of the community connected with it, appear to have suggested
a reckoning by -lustra- similar in plan to the Greek reckoning by
Olympiads--a method, however, which early lost its chronological
significance in consequence of the irregularity that now prevailed
as to the due holding of the census at the right time.
Introduction of Hellenic Alphabets into Italy
The art of expressing sounds by written signs was of later origin
than the art of measurement. The Italians did not any more than
the Hellenes develop such an art of themselves, although we may
discover attempts at such a development in the Italian numeral
signs,(10) 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, Graeco-Roman, and modern civilization; and this
most important product of the human intellect was the joint creation
of the Aramaeans and the Indo-Germans. The Semitic family of
languages, in which the vowel has a subordinate character and never
can begin a word, facilitates on that very account the individualizing
of the consonants; and it was among the Semites accordingly that
the first alphabet--in which the vowels were still wanting--was
invented. It was the Indians and Greeks who first independently
of each other and by very divergent methods created, out of the
Aramaean consonantal writing brought to them by commerce, a complete
alphabet by the addition of the vowels--which was effected by the
application of four letters, which the Greeks did not use as consonantal
signs, for the four vowels -a -e -i -o, and by the formation of a
new sign for -u --in other words by the introduction of the syllable
into writing instead of the mere consonant, or, as Palamedes says
in Euripides,
--Ta teis ge leitheis pharmak orthosas monos
Aphona kai phonounta, sullabas te theis,
Ezeupon anthropoisi grammat eidenai.--
This Aramaeo-Hellenic alphabet was accordingly brought to the
Italians through the medium, doubtless, of the Italian Hellenes;
not, however, through the agricultural colonies of Magna Graecia,
but through the merchants possibly of Cumae or Tarentum, by whom it
would be brought in the first instance to the very ancient emporia
of international traffic in Latium and Etruria--to Rome and Caere.
The alphabet received by the Italians was by no means the oldest
Hellenic one; it had already experienced several modifications,
particularly the addition of the three letters --"id:xi", --"id:phi",
--"id:chi" and the alteration of the signs for --"id:iota",
--"id:gamma", --"id:lambda".(11) We have already observed(12) that
the Etruscan and Latin alphabets were not derived the one from the
other, but both directly from the Greek; in fact the Greek alphabet
came to Etruria in a form materially different from that which
reached Latium. The Etruscan alphabet has a double sign -s (sigma
-"id:s" and san -"id:sh") and only a single -k,(13) and of the
-r only the older form -"id:P"; the Latin has, so far as we know,
only a single -s, but a double sign for -k (kappa -"id:k" and koppa
-"id:q") and of the -r almost solely the more recent form -"id:R".
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 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.
The model alphabet brought to Etruria must notwithstanding its
comparatively remodelled character reach back to an epoch very ancient,
though not positively to be determined; for, as the two sibilants
sigma and san were always used by the Etruscans as different
sounds side by side, the Greek alphabet which came to Etruria must
doubtless still have possessed both of them in this way as living
signs of sound; but among all the monuments of the Greek language
known to us not one presents sigma and san in simultaneous use.
The Latin alphabet certainly, as we know it, bears on the whole
a more recent character; and it is not improbable that the Latins
did not simply receive the alphabet once for all, as was the case
in Etruria, but in consequence of their lively intercourse with
their Greek neighbours kept pace for a considerable period with
the alphabet in use among these, and followed its variations. We
find, for instance, that the forms -"id:/\/\/", -"id:P",(14) and
-"id:SIGMA" were not unknown to the Romans, but were superseded
in common use by the later forms -"id:/\/\", -"id:R", and -"id:S"
--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 the
older character of 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 a sepulchral chamber of Caere
built before the invention of the arch, which exhibits the old
Greek model alphabet 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.
Development of Alphabets in Italy
Not less important for history than the derivation of the 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
coasts. In the earliest epoch of Etruscan writing, when the alphabet
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 Atria 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, among, and indeed
beyond the Alps, so that its last offshoots reached as far as the
Tyrol and Styria. The more recent epoch starts with a reform of
the alphabet, the chief features of which were the introduction of
writing in broken-off lines, the suppression of the -"id:o", which
was no longer distinguished in pronunciation from the -"id:u", and
the introduction of a new letter -"id: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 stocks, the Etruscans on the Arno and around Capua, the
Umbrians and the Samnites; frequently the mediae were entirely or
partially lost, while elsewhere again new vowels and consonants
were developed. But that West-Etruscan reform of the alphabet
was not merely as old as the oldest tombs found in Etruria; it was
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 on
the other hand was confined to Latium, and maintained its ground,
upon the whole, there with but few alterations; only the letters
-"id:gamma" -"id:kappa" and -"id:zeta" -"id:sigma" gradually
became coincident in sound, the consequence of which was, that in
each case one of the homophonous signs (-"id:kappa" -"id:zeta")
disappeared from writing. In Rome it can be shown that these were
already laid aside before the end of the fourth century of the
city,(15) and the whole monumental and literary tradition that has
reached us knows nothing of them, with a single exception.(16) Now
when we consider that in the oldest abbreviations the distinction
between -"id:gamma" -"id:c" and -"id:kappa" -"id:k" is still
regularly maintained;(17) that the period, accordingly, when the
sounds became in pronunciation coincident, and before that again
the period during which the abbreviations became fixed, lies beyond
the beginning of the Samnite wars; 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 Egyptian
Sirius-period within historical times, the year 1321 B.C., than to
the year 776, with which the chronology of the Olympiads began in
Greece.(18) 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 fire with the help of a Latin
exemplar, for it was not likely that engraving on metal was practised
as early as the time of the kings. The charters of foundation of
the imperial period still refer to the charter founding this temple
as the oldest document of the kind in Rome and the common model for
all. But even then they scratched (-exarare-, -scribere-, akin to
-scrobes- (19)) or painted (-linere-, thence -littera-) on leaves
(-folium-), inner bark (-liber-), or wooden tablets (-tabula-,
-album-), afterwards also on leather and linen. The sacred records
of the Samnites as well as of the priesthood of Anagnia were
inscribed on linen rolls, and so were the oldest lists of the Roman
magistrates preserved in the temple of the goddess of recollection
(-Iuno moneta-) on the Capitol. It is scarcely necessary to recall
further proofs in the primitive marking of the pastured cattle
(-scriptura-), in the mode of addressing the senate, "fathers and
enrolled" (-patres conscripti-), and in the great antiquity of
the books of oracles, the clan-registers, and the Alban and Roman
calendars. When Roman tradition speaks of halls in the Forum,
where the boys and girls of quality were taught to read and write,
already in the earliest times of the republic, the statement may
be, but is not necessarily to be deemed, an invention. We have
been deprived of information as to the early Roman history, not in
consequence of the want of a knowledge of writing, or even perhaps
of the lack of documents, but in consequence of the incapacity of
the historians of the succeeding age, which was called to investigate
the history, to work out the materials furnished by the archives,
and of the perversity which led them to desire for the earliest
epoch a delineation of motives and of characters, accounts of
battles and narratives of revolutions, and while engaged in inventing
these, to neglect what the extant written tradition would not have
refused to yield to the serious and self-denying inquirer.
Results
The history of Italian writing thus furnishes in the first place
a confirmation of the weak and indirect influence exercised by the
Hellenic character over the Sabellians as compared with the more
western peoples. The fact that the former received their alphabet
from the Etruscans and not from the Romans is probably to be
explained by supposing that they already possessed it before they
entered upon their migration along the ridge of the Apennines, and
that therefore the Sabines as well as Samnites carried it along
with them from the mother-land to their new abodes. On the other
hand this history of writing contains a salutary warning against the
adoption of the hypothesis, originated by the later Roman culture
in its devotedness to Etruscan mysticism and antiquarian trifling,
and patiently repeated by modern and even very recent inquirers,
that Roman civilization derived its germ and its pith from Etruria.
If this were the truth, some trace of it ought to be more especially
apparent in this field; but on the contrary the germ of the Latin
art of writing was Greek, and its development was so national,
that it did not even adopt the very desirable Etruscan sign for
-"id:f".(20) Indeed, where there is an appearance of borrowing,
as in the numeral signs, it is on the part of the Etruscans, who
took over from the Romans at least the sign for 50.
Corruption of Language and Writing
Lastly it is a significant fact, that among all the Italian stocks
the development of the Greek alphabet primarily consisted in a
process of corruption. Thus the -mediae- disappeared in the whole
of the Etruscan dialects, while the Umbrians lost -"id:gamma" and
-"id:d", the Samnites -"id:d", and the Romans -"id:gamma"; and among
the latter -"id:d" also threatened to amalgamate with -"id:r".
In like manner among the Etruscans -"id:o" and -"id:u" early
coalesced, and even among the Latins we meet with a tendency to
the same corruption. Nearly the converse occurred in the case of
the sibilants; for while the Etruscan retained the three signs
-"id:z", -"id:s", -"id:sh", and the Umbrian rejected the last but
developed two new sibilants in its room, the Samnite and the Faliscan
confined themselves like the Greek to -"id:s" and -"id:z", and the
Roman of later times even to -"id:s" alone. It is plain that the
more delicate distinctions of sound were duly felt by the introducers
of the alphabet, men of culture and masters of two languages;
but after the national writing Became wholly detached from the
Hellenic mother-alphabet, the -mediae- and their -tenues- gradually
came to coincide, and the sibilants and vowels were thrown into
disorder--transpositions or rather destructions of sound, of which
the first in particular is entirely foreign to the Greek. The
destruction of the forms of flexion and derivation went hand in
hand with this corruption of sounds. The cause of this barbarization
was thus, upon the whole, simply the necessary process of
corruption which is continuously eating away every language, where
its progress is not stemmed by literature and reason; only in this
case indications of what has elsewhere passed away without leaving a
trace have been preserved in the writing of sounds. The circumstance
that this barbarizing process affected the Etruscans more strongly
than any other of the Italian stocks adds to the numerous proofs
of their inferior capacity for culture. The fact on the other hand
that, among the Italians, the Umbrians apparently were the most
affected by a similar corruption of language, the Romans less so,
the southern Sabellians least of all, probably finds its explanation,
at least in part, in the more lively intercourse maintained by the
former with the Etruscans, and by the latter with the Greeks.
Notes for Book I Chapter XIV
1. I. II. Indo-Germanic Culture
2. I. II. Indo-Germanic Culture
3. I. XII. Inland Commerce of the Italians
4. I. II. Agriculture
5. I. XII. Priests
6. Originally both the -actus-, "riving," and its still more
frequently occurring duplicate, the -jugerum-, "yoking," were,
like the German "morgen," not measures of surface, but measures of
labour; the latter denoting the day's work, the former the half-day's
work, with reference to the sharp division of the day especially
in Italy by the ploughman's rest at noon.
7. I. XIII. Etrusco-Attic and Latino-Sicilian Commerce
8. I. XII. Nature of the Roman Gods
9. From the same cause all the festival-days are odd, as well those
recurring every month (-kalendae- on the 1st. -nonae- on the 5th
or 7th, -idus- on the 13th or 15th), as also, with but two exceptions,
those of the 45 annual festivals mentioned above (xii. Oldest Table
Of Roman Festivals). This is carried so far, that in the case of
festivals of several days the intervening even days were dropped
out, and so, for example, that of Carmentis was celebrated on Jan.
11, 15, that of the Grove-festival (-Lucaria-) on July 19, 21, and
that of the Ghosts-festival on May 9, 11, and 13.
10. I. XIV. Decimal System
11. The history of the alphabet among the Hellenes turns essentially
on the fact that--assuming the primitive alphabet of 23 letters,
that is to say, the Phoenician alphabet vocalized and enlarged by
the addition of the -"id:u" --proposals of very various kinds were
made to supplement and improve it, and each of these proposals has
a history of its own. The most important of these, which it is
interesting to keep in view as bearing on the history of Italian
writing, are the following:--I. The introduction of special signs
for the sounds --"id:xi" --"id:phi" --"id:chi". This proposal
is so old that all the Greek alphabets--with the single exception
of that of the islands Thera, Melos, and Crete--and all alphabets
derived from the Greek without exception, exhibit its influence.
At first probably the aim was to append the signs --"id:CHI"
= --"id:xi iota", --"id:PHI" = --"id:phi iota", and --"id:PSI"=
--"id:chi iota" to the close of the alphabet, and in this shape it
was adopted on the mainland of Hellas--with the exception of Athens
and Corinth--and also among the Sicilian and Italian Greeks. The
Greeks of Asia Minor on the other hand, and those of the islands of
the Archipelago, and also the Corinthians on the mainland appear,
when this proposal reached them, to have already had in use for the
sound --"id:xi iota" the fifteenth sign of the Phoenician alphabet
--"id:XI" (Samech); accordingly of the three new signs they adopted
the --"id:PHI" for --"id:phi iota", but employed the --"id:CHI"
not for --"id:xi iota", but for --"id:chi iota". The third sign
originally invented for --"id:chi iota" was probably allowed in
most instances to drop; only on the mainland of Asia Minor it was
retained, but received the value of --"id:psi iota". The mode of
writing adopted in Asia Minor was followed also by Athens; only in
its case not merely the --"id:psi iota", but the --"id:xi iota" also,
was not received and in their room the two consonants continued to
be written as before.--II. Equally early, if not still earlier,
an effort was made to obviate the confusion that might so easily
occur between the forms for --"id:iota S" and for --"id:s E"; for
all the Greek alphabets known to us bear traces of the endeavour to
distinguish them otherwise and more precisely. Already in very
early times two such proposals of change must have been made,
each of which found a field for its diffusion. In the one case
they employed for the sibilant--for which the Phoenician alphabet
furnished two signs, the fourteenth ( --"id:/\/\") for --"id:sh" and
the eighteenth (--"id:E") for --"id:s" --not the latter, which was
in sound the more suitable, but the former; and such was in earlier
times the mode of writing in the eastern islands, in Corinth and
Corcyra, and among the Italian Achaeans. In the other case they
substituted for the sign of --"id:i" the simple stroke --"id:I",
which was by far the more usual, and at no very late date became
at least so far general that the broken --"id:iota S" everywhere
disappeared, although individual communities retained the --"id:s"
in the form --"id:/\/\" alongside of the --"I".--III. Of later
date is the substitution of --"id:\/" for --"id:/\" (--"id:lambda")
which might readily be confounded with --"id:GAMMA gamma". This we
meet with in Athens and Boeotia, while Corinth and the communities
dependent on Corinth attained the same object by giving
to the --"id:gamma" the semicircular form --"id:C" instead of the
hook-shape.--IV. The forms for --"id:p" --"id:P (with broken-loop)"
and --"id:r" --"id:P", likewise very liable to be confounded, were
distinguished by transforming the latter into --"id:R"; which more
recent form was not used by the Greeks of Asia Minor, the Cretans,
the Italian Achaeans, and a few other districts, but on the other
hand greatly preponderated both in Greece proper and in Magna
Graecia and Sicily. Still the older form of the --"id:r" --"id:P"
did not so early and so completely disappear there as the older
form of the --"id:l"; this alteration therefore beyond doubt is to
be placed later.--V. The differentiating of the long and short -e
and the long and short -o remained in the earlier times confined
to the Greeks of Asia Minor and of the islands of the Aegean Sea.
All these technical improvements are of a like nature and from a
historical point of view of like value, in so far as each of them
arose at a definite time and at a definite place and thereafter
took its own mode of diffusion and found its special development.
The excellent investigation of Kirchhoff (-Studien zur Geschichte
des griechischen Alphabets-), which has thrown a clear light on
the previously so obscure history of the Hellenic alphabet, and has
also furnished essential data for the earliest relations between the
Hellenes and Italians--establishing, in particular, incontrovertibly
the previously uncertain home of the Etruscan alphabet--is affected
by a certain one-sidedness in so far as it lays proportionally too
great stress on a single one of these proposals. If systems are
here to be distinguished at all, we may not divide the alphabets into
two classes according to the value of the --"id:X" as --"id:zeta"
or as --"id:chi", but we shall have to distinguish the alphabet
of 23 from that of 25 or 26 letters, and perhaps further in this
latter case to distinguish the Ionic of Asia Minor, from which the
later common alphabet proceeded, from the common Greek of earlier
times. In dealing, however, with the different proposals for
the modification of the alphabet the several districts followed
an essentially eclectic course, so that one was received here and
another there; and it is just in this respect that the history of
the Greek alphabet is so instructive, because it shows how particular
groups of the Greek lands exchanged improvements in handicraft
and art, while others exhibited no such reciprocity. As to Italy
in particular we have already called attention to the remarkable
contrast between the Achaean agricultural towns and the Chalcidic
and Doric colonies of a more mercantile character (x. Iono-Dorian
Towns); in the former the primitive forms were throughout retained,
in the latter the improved forms were adopted, even those which
coming from different quarters were somewhat inconsistent, such
as the --"id:C" --"id:gamma" alongside of the --"id:\/" --"id:l".
The Italian alphabets proceed, as Kirchhoff has shown, wholly
from the alphabet of the Italian Greeks and in fact from the
Chalcidico-Doric; but that the Etruscans and Latins received their
alphabet not the one from the other but both directly from the
Greeks, is placed beyond doubt especially by the different form of
the --"id:r". For, while of the four modifications of the alphabet
above described which concern the Italian Greeks (the fifth
was confined to Asia Minor) the first three were already carried
out before the alphabet passed to the Etruscans and Latins, the
differentiation of --"id:p" and --"id:r" had not yet taken place
when it came to Etruria, but on the other hand had at least begun
when the Latins received it; for which reason the Etruscans do
not at all know the form -"id:R" for -"id:r", whereas among the
Faliscans and the Latins, with the single exception of the Dressel
vase (xiv. Note 14 ), the younger form is met with exclusively.
12. I. XIII. Etrusco-Attic and Latino-Sicilian Commerce
13. That the Etruscans always were without the koppa, seems
not doubtful; for not only is no sure trace of it to be met with
elsewhere, but it is wanting in the model alphabet of the Galassi
vase. The attempt to show its presence in the syllabarium of the
latter is at any rate mistaken, for the syllabarium can and does
only take notice of the Etruscan letters that were afterwards
in common use, and to these the koppa notoriously did not belong;
moreover the sign placed at the close cannot well from its position
have any other value than that of the -f, which was in fact the last
letter in the Etruscan alphabet, and which could not be omitted in
a syllabarium exhibiting the variations of that alphabet from its
model. It is certainly surprising that the koppa should be absent
from the Greek alphabet that came to Etruria, when it otherwise
so long maintained its place in the Chalcidico-Doric ; but this
may well have been a local peculiarity of the town whose alphabet
first reached Etruria. Caprice and accident have at all times had
a share in determining whether a sign becoming superfluous shall
be retained or dropped from the alphabet; thus the Attic alphabet
lost the eighteenth Phoenician sign, but retained the others which
had disappeared from the -u.
14. The golden bracelet of Praeneste recently brought to light
(Mitth. der rom. Inst. 1887), far the oldest of the intelligible
monuments of the Latin language and Latin writing, shows the older
form of the -"id:m"; the enigmatic clay vase from the Quirinal
(published by Dressel in the Annali dell Instituto, 1880) shows
the older form of the -"id:r".
15. At this period we shall have to place that recorded form of the
Twelve Tables, which subsequently lay before the Roman philologues,
and of which we possess fragments. Beyond doubt the code was
at its very origin committed to writing; but that those scholars
themselves referred their text not to the original exemplar, but to
an official document written down after the Gallic conflagration,
is proved by the story of the Tables having undergone reproduction
at that time. This enables us easily to explain how their text by
no means exhibited the oldest orthography, which was not unknown to
them; even apart from the consideration that in the case of such
a written document, employed, moreover, for the purpose of being
committed to memory by the young, a philologically exact transmission
cannot possibly be assumed.
16. This is the inscription of the bracelet of Praeneste which
has been mentioned at xiv, note 14. On the other hand even on the
Ficoroni cista -"id:C" has the later form of -"id:K".
17. Thus -"id:C" represents -Gaius-; -"id:CN" -Gnaeus-; while
-"id:K" stands for -Kaeso-. With the more recent abbreviations of
course this is not the case; in these -"id:gamma" is represented
not by -"id:C", but by -"id:G" (-GAL- -Galeria-), --"id:kappa", as
a rule, by -"id:C" (-C- -centum- -COS- -consul; -COL -Collina-), or
before -"id:a" by -"id:K" (-KAR- -karmetalia-; -MERK- -merkatus-).
For they expressed for a time the sound --k before the vowels -e
-i -o and before all consonants by -"id:C", before -a on the other
hand by -"id:K", before -u by the old sign of the koppa -"id:Q".
18. If this view is correct, the origin of the Homeric poems (though
of course not exactly that of the redaction in which we now have
them) must have been far anterior to the age which Herodotus assigns
for the flourishing of Homer (100 before Rome); for the introduction
of the Hellenic alphabet into Italy, as well as the beginning of
intercourse at all between Hellas and Italy, belongs only to the
post-Homeric period.
19. Just as the old Saxon -writan- signifies properly to tear,
thence to write.
20. The enigma as to how the Latins came to employ the Greek sign
corresponding to -v for the -f quite different in sound, has been
solved by the bracelet of Praeneste (xiv. Developments Of Alphabets
in Italy, note) with its -fhefhaked- for -fecit-, and thereby at the
same time the derivation of the Latin alphabet from the Chalcidian
colonies of Lower Italy has been confirmed. For in a Boeotian
inscription belonging to the same alphabet we find in the word
-fhekadamoe-(Gustav Meyer, Griech. Grammatik, sec. 244, ap. fin.)
the same combination of sound, and an aspirated v might certainly
approximate in sound to the Latin -f.
20. -Ratio Tuscanica,: cavum aedium Tuscanicum.-
21. When Varro (ap. Augustin. De Civ. Dei, iv. 31; comp. Plutarch
Num. 8) affirms that the Romans for more than one hundred and
seventy years worshipped the gods without images, he is evidently
thinking of this primitive piece of carving, which, according to
the conventional chronology, was dedicated between 176 and 219, and,
beyond doubt, was the first statue of the gods, the consecration
of which was mentioned in the authorities which Varro had before
him. Comp, above, XIV. Development of Alphabets in Italy.
22. I. XIII. Handicrafts
23. I. XII. Nature of the Roman Gods
24. I. XII. Pontifices