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Three Millennia of Greek Literature
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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

THE HISTORY OF OLD ROME

I. The Period Anterior to the Abolition of the Monarchy

From: The History of Rome, by Theodor Mommsen
Translated with the sanction of the author by William Purdie Dickson


The History of Old Rome

CHAPTER XIV - Measuring and Writing

ELPENOR EDITIONS IN PRINT

The Original Greek New Testament

» Contents of this Chapter

Page 25

Now when we consider that in the oldest abbreviations the distinction between -"γ" -"c" and -"κ" -"id:k" is still regularly maintained;(17) that the period, accordingly, when the sounds became in pronunciation coincident, and before that again the period during which the abbreviations became fixed, lies beyond the beginning of the Samnite wars; and lastly, that a considerable interval must necessarily have elapsed between the introduction of writing and the establishment of a conventional system of abbreviation; we must, both as regards Etruria and Latium, carry back the commencement of the art of writing to an epoch which more closely approximates to the first incidence of the Egyptian Sirius-period within historical times, the year 1321 B.C., than to the year 776, with which the chronology of the Olympiads began in Greece.(18)

17. Thus -"C" represents -Gaius-; -"CN" -Gnaeus-; while -"K" stands for -Kaeso-. With the more recent abbreviations of course this is not the case; in these -"γάμμα" is represented not by -"C", but by -"G" (-GAL- -Galeria-), --"κάππα", as a rule, by -"C" (-C- -centum- -COS- -consul; -COL -Collina-), or before -"a" by -"K" (-KAR- -karmetalia-; -MERK- -merkatus-). For they expressed for a time the sound --k before the vowels -e -i -o and before all consonants by -"C", before -a on the other hand by -"K", before -u by the old sign of the koppa -"Q".

18. If this view is correct, the origin of the Homeric poems (though of course not exactly that of the redaction in which we now have them) must have been far anterior to the age which Herodotus assigns for the flourishing of Homer (100 before Rome); for the introduction of the Greek alphabet into Italy, as well as the beginning of intercourse at all between Greece and Italy, belongs only to the post-Homeric period.

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Reference address : https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/rome/1-14-measuring-writing.asp?pg=25