Roman Writing.
The usual date of the founding of Rome is undoubtedly correct or nearly so. It was about the middle of the eighth century B.C., and the rapid enlargement of the new Latin town on the Tiber, produced by the influx of settlers into a trade emporium with waterway, must have led to an early use of writing. This indicates something like 700 B.C. for the period of the extension of that art over the whole of Italy. The custom of writing from right to left and left to right in alternate lines was retained for several centuries among the various Italic peoples, but the Latins seem to have been the first to adopt the Greek modification by which the letters took their permanent shape from the left-right sequence. In several Greek towns, the old Γ was replaced by a C (the result of a cursive mode of writing), and the triangular Δ had its second and third lines represented by a single curve. The Π was still a
, and the P had a little stroke added to it (
) for the sake of distinction. The Sigma was commonly written
instead of
(Σ). The Latins omitted of course such letters as they found superfluous (z, th, k, ph, ch, ps, and oo), but were naturally bound to retain letters already becoming superfluous to the Greeks (F, Q). The third letter of the alphabet was used for both K and G; but later, when the need of some differentiation became felt, the useless Z was replaced by a second C to which a tail was added (