Re: CHAT: C in Greek Alphabet

R A Brown wrote:
>
> Ph.D. wrote:
> > I was in a bookstore last Saturday just looking
> > through their languages section. I picked the
> > book "Teach Yourself Ancient Greek" off the
> > shelf and looked through it. I noticed that the
> > book used the Latin capital C and lowercase
> > c in the Greek texts in place of the usual sigma
> > (with no distinction between initial and final
> > sigma).
>
> The lower case forms of the Greek alphabet are,
> like the lower case forms of the Roman alphabet,
> medieval developments. Certainly the ancients knew
> nothing about differing forms for final and non-final
> sigma.
>
> > A note in the front of the book said
> > they were doing this because the use of C
> > rather than the traditional form "was becoming
> > the norm in works of Ancient Greek."
>
> The sigma familiar in the Roman period (and, there-
> fore, Hellenistic period) was C. In Latin the word
> _sigma_ [neut., genitive: sigmatis), as well as being
> the name of the Greek letter, also denoted a semi-
> circular couch.
>
> There was in fact quite a variety of forms for sigma
> in the ancient Greek alphabets. From what I can tell,
> the form Σ with serifs became the normal one in
> lapidary inscriptions by the 2nd cent BC, but clearly
> C was the normal hand-written form in the Hellenistic
> period and continued in use in the Byzantine period,
> hence the Cyrillic C, and the very common abbreviations
> IC XC (Jesus Christ). The forms σ and ς are, as I said
> above, medieval cursive developments.
Sorry to resurrect an old thread. I meant to reply to
this, but got sidetracked.

I'm aware that C was the norm in ancient Greek hand-
writing, but my question was really, Why make such a
change at this point? I mean the traditional forms of
sigma are very well established. What gain is there in
making such a change today? The ancients didn't use
punctuation or (normally) spaces between words, yet
we add those when printing ancient Greek or Latin
texts.

--Ph. D.

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