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Please note that Mommsen uses the AUC chronology (Ab Urbe Condita), i.e. from the founding of the City of Rome. You can use this reference table to have the B.C. dates
From: The History of Rome, by Theodor Mommsen
Translated with the sanction of the author by William Purdie Dickson
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Page 18
The alphabet received by the Italians was by no means the oldest Greek one; it had already experienced several modifications, particularly the addition of the three letters --"ξι", --"φι", --"χι" and the alteration of the signs for --"ιότα", --"γάμμα", --"λάμδα".(11)
11. The history of the alphabet among the Greeks turns essentially on the fact that--assuming the primitive alphabet of 23 letters, that is to say, the Phoenician alphabet vocalized and enlarged by the addition of the -"υ" --proposals of very various kinds were made to supplement and improve it, and each of these proposals has a history of its own. The most important of these, which it is interesting to keep in view as bearing on the history of Italian writing, are the following:
--I. The introduction of special signs for the sounds --"ξι" --"φι" --"χι". This proposal is so old that all the Greek alphabets--with the single exception of that of the islands Thera, Melos, and Crete--and all alphabets derived from the Greek without exception, exhibit its influence. At first probably the aim was to append the signs --"χι" = --"χ ιότα", --"φι" = --"φ ιότα", and --"ψι"= --"ψ ιότα" to the close of the alphabet, and in this shape it was adopted on the mainland of Greece--with the exception of Athens and Corinth--and also among the Sicilian and Italian Greeks.
The Greeks of Asia Minor on the other hand, and those of the islands of the Archipelago, and also the Corinthians on the mainland appear, when this proposal reached them, to have already had in use for the sound --"ξ ιότα" the fifteenth sign of the Phoenician alphabet --"χι" (Samech); accordingly of the three new signs they adopted the --"φι" for --"φ ιότα", but employed the --"χι" not for --"ξ ιότα", but for --"χ ιότα". The third sign originally invented for --"χ ιότα" was probably allowed in most instances to drop; only on the mainland of Asia Minor it was retained, but received the value of --"ψ ιότα". The mode of writing adopted in Asia Minor was followed also by Athens; only in its case not merely the --"ψ ιότα", but the --"ξ ιότα" also, was not received and in their room the two consonants continued to be written as before.
--II. Equally early, if not still earlier, an effort was made to obviate the confusion that might so easily occur between the forms for --"iota S" and for --"s E"; for all the Greek alphabets known to us bear traces of the endeavour to distinguish them otherwise and more precisely. Already in very early times two such proposals of change must have been made, each of which found a field for its diffusion. In the one case they employed for the sibilant--for which the Phoenician alphabet furnished two signs, the fourteenth ( --"/\/\") for --"sh" and the eighteenth (--"E") for --"s" --not the latter, which was in sound the more suitable, but the former; and such was in earlier times the mode of writing in the eastern islands, in Corinth and Corcyra, and among the Italian Achaeans.
In the other case they substituted for the sign of --"i" the simple stroke --"I", which was by far the more usual, and at no very late date became at least so far general that the broken --"iota S" everywhere disappeared, although individual communities retained the --"s" in the form --"/\/\" alongside of the --"I".
--III. Of later date is the substitution of --"\/" for --"/\" (--"λάμδα") which might readily be confounded with --"γάμμα". This we meet with in Athens and Boeotia, while Corinth and the communities dependent on Corinth attained the same object by giving to the --"γάμμα" the semicircular form --"C" instead of the hook-shape.
--IV. The forms for --"p" --"P (with broken-loop)" and --"r" --"P", likewise very liable to be confounded, were distinguished by transforming the latter into --"R"; which more recent form was not used by the Greeks of Asia Minor, the Cretans, the Italian Achaeans, and a few other districts, but on the other hand greatly preponderated both in Greece proper and in Magna Graecia and Sicily. Still the older form of the --"r" --"P" did not so early and so completely disappear there as the older form of the --"l"; this alteration therefore beyond doubt is to be placed later.
--V. The differentiating of the long and short -e and the long and short -o remained in the earlier times confined to the Greeks of Asia Minor and of the islands of the Aegean Sea.
All these technical improvements are of a like nature and from a historical point of view of like value, in so far as each of them arose at a definite time and at a definite place and thereafter took its own mode of diffusion and found its special development. The excellent investigation of Kirchhoff (-Studien zur Geschichte des griechischen Alphabets-), which has thrown a clear light on the previously so obscure history of the Greek alphabet, and has also furnished essential data for the earliest relations between the Greeks and Italians--establishing, in particular, incontrovertibly the previously uncertain home of the Etruscan alphabet--is affected by a certain one-sidedness in so far as it lays proportionally too great stress on a single one of these proposals.
If systems are here to be distinguished at all, we may not divide the alphabets into two classes according to the value of the --"X" as --"zeta" or as --"chi", but we shall have to distinguish the alphabet of 23 from that of 25 or 26 letters, and perhaps further in this latter case to distinguish the Ionic of Asia Minor, from which the later common alphabet proceeded, from the common Greek of earlier times. In dealing, however, with the different proposals for the modification of the alphabet the several districts followed an essentially eclectic course, so that one was received here and another there; and it is just in this respect that the history of the Greek alphabet is so instructive, because it shows how particular groups of the Greek lands exchanged improvements in handicraft and art, while others exhibited no such reciprocity.
As to Italy in particular we have already called attention to the remarkable contrast between the Achaean agricultural towns and the Chalcidic and Doric colonies of a more mercantile character (x. Iono-Dorian Towns); in the former the primitive forms were throughout retained, in the latter the improved forms were adopted, even those which coming from different quarters were somewhat inconsistent, such as the --"C" --"γάμμα" alongside of the --"\/" --"l".
The Italian alphabets proceed, as Kirchhoff has shown, wholly from the alphabet of the Italian Greeks and in fact from the Chalcidico-Doric; but that the Etruscans and Latins received their alphabet not the one from the other but both directly from the Greeks, is placed beyond doubt especially by the different form of the --"r". For, while of the four modifications of the alphabet above described which concern the Italian Greeks (the fifth was confined to Asia Minor) the first three were already carried out before the alphabet passed to the Etruscans and Latins, the differentiation of --"p" and --"r" had not yet taken place when it came to Etruria, but on the other hand had at least begun when the Latins received it; for which reason the Etruscans do not at all know the form -"R" for -"r", whereas among the Faliscans and the Latins, with the single exception of the Dressel vase (xiv. Note 14 ), the younger form is met with exclusively.
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Reference address : https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/rome/1-14-measuring-writing.asp?pg=18
