G The form of this letter which is familiar to us is an invention of the Romans, who had previously converted the third symbol of the alphabet into a representative of a k-sound (see [C]). Throughout the whole of Roman history C remained as the symbol for G in the abbreviations C and Cn. for the proper names Gaius and Gnaeus. According to Plutarch (Roman Questions, 54, 59) the symbol for G was invented by Spurius Carvilius Ruga about 293 B.C. This probably means that he was the first person to spell his cognomen RVGA instead of RVCA. G came to occupy the seventh place in the Roman alphabet which had earlier been taken by Z, because between 450 B.C. and 350 B.C. the z-sounds of Latin passed into r, names like Papisius and Fusius in that period becoming Papirius and Furius (see [Z]), so that the letter z had become superfluous. According to the late writer Martianus Capella z was removed from the alphabet by the censor Appius Claudius Caecus in 312 B.C. To Claudius the insertion of G into the alphabet is also sometimes ascribed.
In the earliest form the difference from C is very slight, the lower lip of the crescent merely rising up in a straight line
, but
and
are found also in republican times. In the earliest Roman inscription which was found in the Forum in 1899 the form is
