RIQHTHANDEDNESS. 217 



The rites of the social board among the ancient Greeks required 

 the passing of the wine from right to left — or, at any rate, in one 

 invariable direction, — as indicated by Homer in his description of the 

 feast of the gods, (Iliad, i. 597, d^eoT? kvdi'^ia Tzd^cv wvo^osc,') where 

 HephsBstus goes round and pours out the sweet nectar to the assembled 

 gods. The direction pursued by the cup-bearer would be determined 

 by his bearing the flagon in his right hand, and so walking from left 

 to right, with his right hand towards the guests. This is, indeed, a 

 point of dispute among scholars. But it is sufficient for our present 

 purpose that a uniform practice prevailed, dependent on the recognition 

 of right and left-handedness ; and this is no less apparent among the 

 Romans than the Greeks. It is set forth in the most unmusical of 

 Horace's hexameters: "Ille sinistrorsum, hie dextrorsum abit;" and 

 finds its precise elucidation from many independent sources : in the 

 allusions of the poets, in the works of the sculptors, and the decorations 

 of fictile ware. The determination of the actual right and left of the 

 Greeks and Romans, as of other nations, in order to ascertain if they 

 were the same as our own, is important in relation to the whole bearing 

 of this inquiry. But the true direction of the Hebrew right and left 

 has a special significance, in view of the fact that whilst the great class 

 of Aryan languages, including the ancient Sanscrit, Greek and Latin, 

 appear to have been written from left to right, and the same character- 

 istic is common to the whole alphabets and writings of India, all the 

 Semitic languages, except the Ethiopic, are written from right to left. 

 This uniform habit has so largely affected our current handwriting, and 

 modified its forms into those best adapted for rapid and continuous 

 execution in the one direction, that its reversal at once suggests the 

 idea of its origination among a left-handed people. But thei'e is no 

 true ground for this. So long as each character was separately drawn> 

 and when, moreover, they were pictorial or ideographic, it was, in 

 reality, more natural to begin at the right, or nearer side, of the papyrus 

 or tablet, than to pass over to the left. The direction of the writing 

 only becomes significant in reference to a current hand. The older 

 Greek fashion of boustrophedon, or alternating, like the course of oxen 

 in ploughing, still more strongly illustrates the natural process of begin- 

 ing uniformly at the side nearest to the hand; nor did either thisj 

 or the still earlier mode of writing in columns, as with the ancient 

 Egyptians, or the Chinese, present any impediment, so long as it was 

 executed in detached characters. 



