etween the Achaean agricultural towns and the Chalcidic
and Doric colonies of a more mercantile character (x. Iono-Dorian
Towns); in the former the primitive forms were throughout retained,
in the latter the improved forms were adopted, even those which
coming from different quarters were somewhat inconsistent, such
as the --"id:C" --"id:gamma" alongside of the --"id:\/" --"id:l".
The Italian alphabets proceed, as Kirchhoff has shown, wholly
from the alphabet of the Italian Greeks and in fact from the
Chalcidico-Doric; but that the Etruscans and Latins received their
alphabet not the one from the other but both directly from the
Greeks, is placed beyond doubt especially by the different form of
the --"id:r". For, while of the four modifications of the alphabet
above described which concern the Italian Greeks (the fifth
was confined to Asia Minor) the first three were already carried
out before the alphabet passed to the Etruscans and Latins, the
differentiation of --"id:p" and --"id:r" had not yet taken place
when it came to Etruria, but on the other hand had at least begun
when the Latins received it; for which reason the Etruscans do
not at all know the form -"id:R" for -"id:r", whereas among the
Faliscans and the Latins, with the single exception of the Dressel
vase (xiv. Note 14 ), the younger form is met with exclusively.

12. I. XIII. Etrusco-Attic and Latino-Sicilian Commerce

13. That the Etruscans always were without the koppa, seems
not doubtful; for not only is no sure trace of it to be met with
elsewhere, but it is wanting in the model alphabet of the Galassi
vase. The attempt to show its presence in the syllabarium of the
latter is at any rate mistaken, for the syllabarium can and does
only take notice of the Etruscan letters that were afterwards
in common use, and to these the koppa notoriously did not belong;
moreover the sign placed at the close cannot well from its position
have any other value than that of the -f, which was in fact the last
letter in the Etruscan alphabet, and which could not be omitted in
a syllabarium exhibiting the variations of that alphabet from its
model. It is certainly surprising that the koppa should be absent
from the Greek alphabet that came to Etruria, when it otherwise
so long maintained its place in the Chalcidico-Doric ; but this
may well have been a local peculiarity of the town whose alphabet
first reached Etruria. Caprice and accident have at all times had
a