246 



ALPHABET. 



ALTAR. 



248 



P is chiefly due to modern printers. The Greek had almost invariably 

 its second leg much shorter than the first, and the Roman P very 

 rarely had the circular bend completed so as to reach the main shaft. 

 See the plates, and, above all, compare the .Etruscan P in 7 with the 

 Roman P in IV. 3. The letter Isadi has no representative in the Greek 

 alphabet, unless, indeed, it bear any relation to the Greek figure called 

 sanpi, which, however, was never used, as far as it is known, for an 

 alphabetic character ; and secondly, even as a numeral, it does not 

 occupy the place between TT and Icoppa. In the Icoppa, the Hebrew, or 

 perhaps rather the Phenician, has a roller and a more perfect form than 

 the Greek ; but be this as it may, the connection between them requires 

 no comment. If the p in 9 or 11 be the earliest form, the derivation of 

 the rest is simple. The Hebrew has suffered the same injury as in beth 

 and dalet/i, a comparison with which will remove all doubt. In 3, 13, 

 and more fully in 22, 24, 27, we see the origin of the Roman r. The 

 original form of shin was perhaps as near the Hebrew as any of our 

 characters ; but, in fact, the difference between the thin in 1 and 4, 

 and the Greek sigma in 9, 14, 15, 16, 17, 26, &c., or the Etruscan in 6, 

 depends solely upon the altered position. The relative situation of the 

 several strokes among each other is the same in both. The next letter, 

 tin, should perhaps have been omitted, as the difference between the 

 power of sin and shin arises solely from the position of the point, which 

 is near the right tooth in shin, near the left in sin. So completely are 

 the two characters one in their origin, that they stand for the same 

 number in the series of Hebrew letters. The T in 6 would be a fit and 

 proper parent for all the other forms. In the three characters, 1,2,3,7,8, 

 the cross stroke has had an unfair preponderance to one side, as is the 

 case again in our modern small character. In the Hebrew a little 

 flourish has added to the difference. The next letter, it has been 

 already observed, seems to have grown out of the ay in. Ita forms 

 vary, but not unintelligibly. The modern and v are, it has been 

 already said, both derived from the Latin form, which had the double 

 power of our consonant ir, and our vowel . With regard to <f> and x, 

 we find in 14 the double forms used before they were adopted ; but 

 unhappily the genuineness of this inscription is doubted. Of the i^, 

 mention has been already made. fl brings us to the close ; and it may 

 be sufficient to observe, that among the forms given to this letter by 

 Mionnet, in his work on ancient coins, one consists of an ordinary o 

 lying upon a horizontal straight line. This has led to the notion that 

 the letter was thus originally formed to mark a long o, and, in confir- 

 mation of this notion, the letter H, as written in No. 9, was appealed 

 to, which it was contended was formed in like manner from the letter 

 E, with a perpendicular stroke on the right. The form of a, in 32, 

 would appear to be made up of the letter ayin or o repeated, precisely 

 as our own w has its form as well as name from a repetition of it or v. 

 The letter to as well as >) were not used in public documents at Athens 

 until the year 403 B. c., when Euclid was Archon, but it must not 

 be supposed that the letters were then invented, for, as Payne 

 Knight has observed, the a> appears on the coins of Gelon, who died 

 478 B. c., and the it on very ancient coins of the Regians. Still in 

 parly times it was the ordinary practice to use o and c for both long 

 and short vowels. 



In forming a table of the real Roman characters, there is some 

 difficulty from the circumstance, that nearly all those who report 

 ancient inscriptions take the liberty of using modern characters. Of 

 those given in plate 4, the first is from the fac-simile of the Bacca- 

 nalian inscription given by Drakenborch in the seventh volume of his 

 ' Livy ;' the date of which is fixed at 186 B. c., by the names of the 

 consuls given in the decree. This inscription is in the Csesarean 

 Museum at Vienna. The second and third columns are from an 

 inscription given by Maffei, in his ' Istoria Diplomatic,!,' p. 38, and here 

 the date is fixed to the year 27 A. D., in the reign of Tiberius, by the 

 names of the consuls, M. Crassus Frugi, L. Calpurnius Piso. Column 

 4 is from the same work of Maffei, p. 31, and belongs to the year 68 or 

 69, as is determined by the mention of the Emperor Galba. Both these 

 inscriptions are of very coarse execution. Fac-similes of some very 

 ancient inscriptions are also to be seen in the works on Herculaneum 

 and in Muratori. The characters of the Medicean manuscript of 

 Virgil, preserved at Florence, are taken from Burmann's engraved 

 specimen, in the first volume of his edition of that author, p. xxxvi. 

 of the preface. The remaining alphabets of that plate are from 

 Astle's ' Origin of Writing.' The separate alphabets, beginning with 

 the Coptic and ending with the Runic, are chiefly from the French 

 ' Encyclopaedia.' 



The Roman alphabet requires but little comment. It has been seen 

 how completely it agrees with the Greek. In the order of the letters 

 the only violent difference consists in the insertion of the G after F, 

 but what place could be better suited to it than the position of Z, a 

 character which had no correlative in the Latin series ? Our modern 

 grammars, indeed, give both y and ;, but Suetonius tells us indirectly 

 that the Roman alphabet terminated at x, for the Emperor Augustus, 

 he observes, employed a peculiar cypher in his papers. For the letter 

 he wrote 6 ; for 6, e ; and so on, until for x he wrote a or aa. Some 

 commentators, indeed, scandalised at the ignorance of Suetonius in not 

 knowing his own A, B, C, have substituted z for x in the above passage. 

 But, in fact, there is not a single Latin word that contains either y or z. 

 Modern printers have further increased the Latin alphabet by giving in 

 two instances double characters where the Romans had but one. The 



letter I of the Romans, besides its power as a vowel, represented also 

 the closely-allied sound of our consonant Y, or the German J. When 

 it is used with this consonantal power, modern printers have taken the 

 liberty of substituting the character J, and modern readers have aggra- 

 vated the error by giving it the sound of that English letter. Thus 

 the Latin word IVGVM is now printed and pronounced juyum, instead 

 of iugmn or yugum, so as to destroy the close similarity of the word to 

 the corresponding English term, yoke. Again, the Roman letter repre- 

 sented by t> in inscriptions, and by u in the round form of manuscripts, 

 has suffered the same fate. As a vowel, it has it for its character in 

 modern books of Latin. But the Romans, as we have already stated, 

 also employed it as a consonant, equivalent to our w. In this case the 

 printer has preferred the sharp form r, which has again misled the 

 modern reader as to the sound. When pronounced correctly, the Latin 

 words respa, rastare, rentus, bear a close analogy to our own terms 

 wasp, to waste, wind. The letter K, though it became unnecessary 

 when the third character was changed from a gamma to C, is a genuine 

 member of the Roman alphabet, though often excluded from school 

 grammars. What we have said leads to the result that the Roman 

 alphabet had twenty-one letters, and this number agrees with the 

 statement in Cicero (' Nat. Deor.' ii., 37 or 93). 



It would be rather an amusing subject of inquiry, to trace to their 

 source the remarkable differences in the magnitude of our modern 

 small characters, some rising above, others descending below the 

 general line. The first attempts of certain letters to shoot out into an 

 undue extent may be seen in several parts of Plate IV., and we will 

 leave the development to any reader who may be disposed to pursue it. 

 It is but right to state further that the remarks we have made, and the 

 alphabets we have given, are by no means sufficient to enable any one 

 to read ancient manuscripts. Independently of the varying forms of 

 letters, there are numberless contractions, which can only be learned 

 by long practice. 



ALPHONSINE TABLES. [ALONSINE.] 



AL-SIRAT (that is, literally, ' The Path '), in the theology of some 

 of the Mohammedans, is the name of a bridge extending over the 

 abyss of hell, which must be passed by every one in order to enter 

 paradise. It is described as being narrow, like the edge of a sword. 

 Some, it is said, will pass it with the rapidity of lightning, others 

 with the swiftness of a horse at full gallop, others like a horse at a 

 slow pace, others still slower, on account of the weight of their sins, 

 and some will fall down from it, and be precipitated into hell. 



ALT, in music (from the Latin allot, high), that part of the scale 

 beginning with F, the fifth line in the treble clef, and ending at E, 

 the third leger, or additional, line above the same clef. 



ALTA, in music (Italian ' high '), generally used in addition to the 

 word ottava, as ' ottava alta,' an octave higher ; piu,' more, being by 

 custom omitted. 



ALTAR, an erection to offer sacrifice upon. The first altar mentioned 

 is that set up by Noah, to offer sacrifice when he quitted the ark ; and 

 throughout the history of the Jewish patriarchs, altars are continually 

 said to have been erected by them, in different places, as circum- 

 stances rendered it expedient. These seem to have been built of 

 earth, or unhewn stone, like the altars which God commanded Moses 

 to raise : Exod. xx. 24, 25. But when the Jewish law was given, the 

 right of raising altars and offering sacrifice was no longer left common 

 to all men ; but one altar of burnt-offering, at which alone victims 

 were slain, was made for the whole nation, and the priests, as ministers 

 for the nation, offered sacrifice upon it for all. This in the first 

 instance was constructed of wood, covered with brass, and always 

 followed the ark, while the ark was migratory ; but when Solomon 

 built the temple, he placed a stone altar, with a brazen hearth, 

 in the court before it. The Jews had two other altars, one 

 solely appropriated to burning incense, called the altar of incense ; the 

 other called the altar of shew-bread, because loaves were placed 

 upon it, and changed every Sabbath ; which stood in the interior of 

 the temple. 



We constantly meet in the Bible with the expression of the ' horns 

 of the altar.' Some suppose that these were really the horns of 

 animals; others that they were merely projections at the corners. 

 One use of them is obvious : victims might be conveniently bound to 

 them. Psalm cxviii. 27. But horns were an emblem of power and 

 authority throughout the east ; and probably they were also meant to 

 indicate the greatness of him to whom the altar was sacred. The 

 altars of the Greeks and Romans had sometimes horns also, to which 

 animals were fastened, and to which those who fled thither for pro- 

 tection used to cling. It was an act of impiety to force such persons 

 away. This belief in the sanctity of places was adopted by the Roman 

 Catholic Church, which, in the season of its temporal power, largely 

 bestowed the privilege of sanctuary upon favourite churches and con- 

 vents. [ASYLUM.] 



A sort of natural religion seems to have pointed out the tops of hills 

 and groves, as the fittest spots for altars. The pagan nations which 

 surrounded the Jews were especially addicted to worshipping in high 

 places; and it was hardly possible to prevent the Jews themselves 

 from falling into this habit. " They also built them high places, and 

 images, and groves, on every high hill, and under every green tree." 

 1 Kings xiv. 23. Passages of the same import occur continually in the 

 Jewish Chronicles. The northern nations of ancient Europe worshipped 



