of grammarians, are not letters of the same organ, but, on the contrary, as distinct in sound as any two in the alphabet, there must of necessity have existed some cause of a very peculiar nature, to produce and account for the confusion of these letters. If the mistake had been limited to a single proper name, like that of the Furian or Fusian family, the circumstance would not have been worth investigating; but this is so far from having been the case, that we find a large class of words enumerated by the writers on Roman antiquities, distinguished by the same ambiguity. Varro, in the sixth book of his work De Lingua Latina, says: "In multis verbis in quo antiqui dicebant s, postea dicunt r, ut in carmine Saliorum sunt hæc: cosauli (chorauli), dolosi (dolori), eso (ero), post melios (melior), fœdesum (fœderum), plusima (plurima), asena (arena), janitos (janitor).” (Lanzi, Saggio, tom. i. p. 126.) I would begin by remarking that in attempting to throw light on the archaisms of any language, it does not appear to have occurred to antiquarians, that the first step should be to recur to the most ancient alphabet of that language, and endeavour to ascertain its gradual formation and successive changes. They appear to have regarded alphabets as something as fixed and permanent as language itself, as if they were altogether the work of nature, and not, on the contrary, the contrivance of art, in some cases more, and in others less, perfect; and yet almost all scholars must be aware of the common tradition, that the Greek alphabet consisted primarily of only sixteen letters, and that the oldest Roman alphabet was as narrow. A cursory inspection will convince us, not merely that many of the most ancient characters have entirely disappeared, without leaving a trace of themselves. in the alphabet as finally settled (a circumstance which would merely incapacitate us for reading the ancient inscriptions, in which those characters occur), but, what is found to be a source of incomparably greater confusion and difficulty, that precisely the same form has, at different periods, been appropriated to different letters, so that the power being changed, while the appearance remained the same, the nicest scrutiny of the eye produced no other effect than that of misleading the ear. Among the characters which have entirely disappeared from the Greek and Roman alphabets, are two Sanskrit S's, one of which is also Phoenician, and respecting each of them I shall have a few words to say. I must commence, however, with giving the forms accurately. Sanskrit letter Sa, from Wilkins' Grammar. 2 Phoenician Samech, from Dutens' Medals. Third form in the alphabet given by him. The reader will remark, that the square frame work is no essential part of the Sanskrit letter, and that in both instances the genuine character is the European figure of 2, for which we are said to be indebted to the Arabians. I now proceed to give two exemplifications of its occurrence in Lanzi 23 Tomo ii. p. 370., inscrip. 113. The letters are an Etruscan Chi, or Roman Q, intended as an abbreviation for Quintia; then follows the name at length, Vesinei; a Hebrew Beth, with the power of v, a Greek Epsilon, a Sanskrit or Phoenician s, and the other characters too plain to be mistaken 211AVЯ Tomo ii. p. 389., inscrip. 181. Ruapis, with the Sanskrit or Phoenician s, occurring as a final here there is not the smallest doubt about the Etruscan letters, as we find them in common Roman characters beneath. : Having given the other Sanskrit s at the commencement of this paragraph or section, I have only to exemplify its use by Lanzi. He, of course, reads and prints it like a Roman capital R, though he is perfectly aware that the words require an s. I, on the contrary, give the words as I suppose them to have been originally written. Tianus } tom. iii. p. 600., inscrip. 10. Akurunnias, tom. iii. p. 604., inscrip. 26. The oldest form of the Greek Rho was 4, and the next with the perpendicular stroke a little lengthened, and the oldest existing instance, according to Dutens, of the lower stroke being added, which converted it into a Roman R, is in the Nointel inscription, B. c. 450; and until about that period there was, probably, no ambiguity between S, and R; but from that time the mistakes became so frequent, as to occasion this form of S, H, to be entirely discontinued at the final settlement of the Roman alphabet. Being discontinued, it was, as a matter of course, completely forgotten; and whenever it occurred in inscriptions of great antiquity, like the above three, it was read as a capital R, the only letter in the settled Roman alphabet to which it bore the least resemblance, as has been done by Lanzi. VIII. Among the most celebrated of all the Roman inscriptions, is that of the Duillian column, erected to perpetuate the memory of the first naval victory of the Romans, obtained by the Consul Duillius over the Carthaginians, in the year of Rome 494. The original column, however, has not come down to us, that in existence being supposed by Lanzi not to be older than the reign of the Emperor Claudius. Indeed, a circumstance is mentioned in Brotier's supplement to Tacitus, which, if well founded, must induce us to regard the whole body of Roman inscriptions with extreme suspicion, and, at any rate, teach us a lesson of caution. He says, "The records of the old republic, and all the valuable monuments of antiquity, had perished in the flames of the capitol, not less than three thousand brazen tablets, on which were engraved the decrees of the senate and the acts of the people, were destroyed in that dreadful conflagration. To repair the loss as well as might be, Vespasian ordered diligent search to be made in every quarter, for the copies that were known to exist; and, after due examination, he deposited the same in the public archives. He rebuilt the capitol; promoted arts and sciences; encouraged men of genius; and, though his avarice in many instances was little short of rapacity, he spared no expense to restore the buildings which had been destroyed by Nero's fire, and in general to improve and adorn the city." (Valpy's Classical Library, vol. xv. p. 64.) Be that as it may, I have little hesitation in expressing my opinion that the inscription which has come to us, contains various readings, which never were, are now, nor ever will be, Latin, in spite of all the efforts of the most accomplished scholars to explain them; and I adduce them as another instance of the anomalies arising out of the use of the equivocal characters R and S, in the early Roman alphabet, and which may be accounted for from that circumstance. In the early part of that inscription as given by Lanzi, we read Lecioneis, Maximosque, Macistratos, Casteris, so that there can be no doubt that the plural number was formed by the addition of S, in the usual manner; while in the latter part we read Praesented, Maxumod, Dictatored, Olorum In Altod Marid Pugnandod. Both readings cannot by any possibility be genuine. Which is the true one? I believe the Sanskrit S was written in the original inscription . This, in the course of time, was entirely laid aside, as being inconveniently (like the Roman capital R, as originally) written from right to left Я. The S was forgotten, and in the age of Claudius, when the inscription was renewed, being desirous to retain some portion of its archaism, they wrote the ancient Greek, or Etruscan (R), instead of the Sanskrit S, which they read as R. In deciphering any very ancient inscription, the great point for consideration is, not what the characters actually signify to us, the readers, but what they did signify, at the period they were written, to the persons who wrote them. I cannot believe for a moment, that Latin plurals ever terminated in Delta, the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet; and could as easily credit the existence of Arimaspii or Blemmyes, Centaurs or Cynocephali. IX. The substitution of R for S is said to be a Doricism, and one of the leading peculiarities of the Doric dialect; and few facts appear to be better established, or supported by more numerous instances. I venture to suppose, however, that this peculiarity is not older than the art of alphabetical writing; and the direct consequence of the existence of two ambiguous characters, of which we find many instances in Italy, and which in Greece was preserved in a permanent dialect. If we receive the common account, that the use of alphabetical characters was brought into the former from the latter country, there is no violation of probability in supposing that this character H, Sanskrit S, existed in Greece as well as in Italy. The oldest form of the Roman R, however, Я, which is so much like it, is found in the Nointel, or Baudelet inscription, brought from Athens by the Marquis de Nointel, and which Dutens supposes to be as old as the year B. C. 450. Lanzi says, that in the Latin tables of Gubbio we meet with many words terminating in R, which in the older Etruscan inscriptions terminate in S. (Tom. i. p. 258.) All these instances are clearly so many misreadings of a letter, and not to be regarded as changes of dialect. Eustathius calls this substitution of R for S an Eolicism. It is more commonly regarded as a Doricism; at any rate, one of the most remarkable exemplifications of it on record, is the celebrated decree of the Spartans against Timotheus the Milesian. It was first quoted in the History of Music by Boethius, who wrote in the sixth century; and though full of errors of all sorts, in a more especial manner substitutes R for S, in a degree which it is impossible to account for, except by supposing misreadings of an ancient and obsolete Greek character. It is published in the Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, in a paper by Monsieur de la Nauze, "Sur l'état des Sciences chez les Lacedemoniens," in Maittaire, De Dialectis Græcis, and in the appendix to Rose's Inscriptiones Græcæ Vetustissimæ. Monsieur de la Nauze very truly describes it as "plus que Dorien," and Toup still more justly, as "corrupto corruptius." x. Alpha (a), and 4 Rho (r), from the Amyclean Inscription. Strabo, describing Eretria in the island of Euboea, says, we ought, without doubt, to ascribe to a colony of Eleans, in their city, the custom they have contracted, and for which they are ridiculed in the Comedy, of placing an R not only at the end but also in the middle of words (Liber 10). R |