[640] Herodot. iii, 107.
[641] The various statements or conjectures to be found in Greek authors (all comparatively recent) respecting the origin of the Greek alphabet, are collected by Franz, Epigraphicê Græca, s. iii, pp. 12-20: “Omnino Græci alphabeti ut certa primordia sunt in origine Phœniciâ, ita certus terminus in litteraturâ Ionicâ seu Simonideâ. Quæ inter utrumque a veteribus ponuntur, incerta omnia et fabulosa.... Non commoramur in iis quæ de litterarum origine et propagatione ex fabulosâ Pelasgorum historiâ (cf. Knight, pp. 119-123; Raoul Rochette, pp. 67-87) neque in iis quæ de Cadmo narrantur quem unquam fuisse hodie jam nemo crediderit.... Alphabeti Phœnicii omnes 22 literas cum antiquis Græcis congruere, hodie nemo est qui ignoret.” (pp. 14-15.) Franz gives valuable information respecting the changes gradually introduced into the Greek alphabet, and the erroneous statements of the Grammatici as to what letters were original, and what were subsequently added.
Kruse also, in his “Hellas,” (vol. i, p. 13, and in the first Beylage, annexed to that volume,) presents an instructive comparison of the Greek, Latin, and Phenician alphabets.
The Greek authors, as might be expected, were generally much more fond of referring the origin of letters to native heroes or gods, such as Palamêdês, Promêtheus, Musæus, Orpheus, Linus, etc., than to the Phenicians. The oldest known statement (that of Stêsichorus, Schol. ap. Bekker. Anecdot. ii, p. 786) ascribes them to Palamêdês.
Both Franz and Kruse contend strenuously for the existence and habit of writing among the Greeks in times long anterior to Homer: in which I dissent from them.
[642] See O. Müller, Die Etrusker (iv, 6), where there is much instruction on the Tuscan alphabet.
[643] This question is raised and discussed by Justus Olshausen, Ueber den Ursprung des Alphabetes (pp. 1-10), in the Kieler Philologische Studien, 1841.
[644] See Boeckh, Metrologie, chs. iv, v, vi; also the preceding volume of this History.
[645] Utica is said to have been founded 287 years earlier than Carthage; the author who states this, professing to draw his information from Phenician histories (Aristot. Mirab. Auscult. c. 134). Velleius Paterculus states Gadês to be older than Utica, and places the foundation of Carthage B. C. 819 (i, 2, 6). He seems to follow in the main the same authority as the composer of the Aristotelic compilation above cited. Other statements place the foundation of Carthage in 878 B. C. (Heeren, Ideen über den Verkehr, etc., part ii, b. i, p. 29). Appian states the date of the foundation as fifty years before the Trojan war (De Reb. Punic. c. 1); Philistus, as twenty-one years before the same event (Philist. Fragm. 50, ed. Göller); Timæus, as thirty-eight years earlier than the 1st Olympiad (Timæi Fragm. 21, ed. Didot); Justin, seventy-two years earlier than the foundation of Rome (xviii, 6).
The citation which Josephus gives from Menander’s work, extracted from Tyrian ἀναγραφαὶ, placed the foundation of Carthage 143 years after the building of the temple of Jerusalem (Joseph. cont. Apion. i, c. 17-18). Apion said that Carthage was founded in the first year of Olympiad 7 (B. C. 748), (Joseph. c. Apion. ii, 2.)