ed
in far greater darkness than the commerce with foreigners on its
coasts. In the earliest epoch of Etruscan writing, when the alphabet
was used without material alteration as it had been introduced, its
use appears to have been restricted to the Etruscans on the Po and
in what is now Tuscany. In course of time this alphabet, manifestly
diffusing itself from Atria and Spina, reached southward along
the east coast as far as the Abruzzi, northward to the Veneti and
subsequently even to the Celts at the foot of, among, and indeed
beyond the Alps, so that its last offshoots reached as far as the
Tyrol and Styria. The more recent epoch starts with a reform of
the alphabet, the chief features of which were the introduction of
writing in broken-off lines, the suppression of the -"id:o", which
was no longer distinguished in pronunciation from the -"id:u", and
the introduction of a new letter -"id:f" for which the alphabet as
received by them had no corresponding sign. This reform evidently
arose among the western Etruscans, and while it did not find
reception beyond the Apennines, became naturalized among all the
Sabellian tribes, and especially among the Umbrians. In its further
course the alphabet experienced various fortunes in connection with
the several stocks, the Etruscans on the Arno and around Capua, the
Umbrians and the Samnites; frequently the mediae were entirely or
partially lost, while elsewhere again new vowels and consonants
were developed. But that West-Etruscan reform of the alphabet
was not merely as old as the oldest tombs found in Etruria; it was
considerably older, for the syllabarium just mentioned as found
probably in one of these tombs already presents the reformed
alphabet in an essentially modified and modernized shape; and, as
the reformed alphabet itself is relatively recent as compared with
the primitive one, the mind almost fails in the effort to reach back
to the time when that alphabet came to Italy. While the Etruscans
thus appear as the instruments in diffusing the alphabet in the
north, east, and south of the peninsula, the Latin alphabet on
the other hand was confined to Latium, and maintained its ground,
upon the whole, there with but few alterations; only the letters
-"id:gamma" -"id:kappa" and -"id:zeta" -"id:sigma" gradually
became coincident in sound, the consequence of which was, that in
each case one of the homophonous signs (-"id:kappa" -"id:zeta")
disappeared from writing.