It was the Egyptians who
first symbolized ideas, and
that by the figures of animals. These records, the most
ancient of all human history, are still seen engraved on stone. The
Egyptians also claim to have invented the alphabet, which the
Phœnicians, they say, by means of their superior seamanship,
introduced into
Greece, and of which they
appropriated the glory, giving out that they had discovered what they had
really been taught. Tradition indeed says that Cadmus, visiting
Greece in a Phœnician fleet, was the teacher of
this art to its yet barbarous tribes. According to one account, it was
Cecrops of
Athens or Linus of
Thebes, or Palamedes of
Argos in
Trojan times who invented the shapes of sixteen letters, and others, chiefly
Simonides, added the rest. In
Italy the Etrurians
learnt them from Demaratus of
Corinth, and the
Aborigines from the
Arcadian Evander. And so the Latin letters have the same
form as the oldest Greek characters. At first too our alphabet was scanty,
and additions were afterwards made. Following this precedent Claudius added
three letters, which were employed during his reign and subsequently
disused. These may still be seen on the tablets of brass set up in the
squares and temples, on which new statutes are published.
