Greeks and Goths Author:Isaac Taylor Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: eclectic principles, borrowing some letters from the Greeks, some from the Eomans, others from the Hebrews, and inventing the remainder as it pleased him. At ... more »the present time the most generally accepted opinion seems to be that the runes were derived directly from the Phoenician alphabet. This view is upheld by the great authority of Professor Stephens1, and is supported by the still greater name of Lenormant, who specifically derives the Eunes from the Sidonian type of the Phoenician Alphabet2. Mr. Peile, the most recent writer on the subject3, soberly sums up the prevalent view in these words: ' It may be asserted with some confidence that if the runes were genuine Alphabets (which there seems no reason to deny) they must have been derived from the Phoenicians in process of commerce. There is quite sufficient similarity in several of the characters to make this view antecedently probable,Historical Proof wanting. 17 1 Runic Monuments, pp. 94, 834. 2 Essai swr la propagation de t Alphabet Phenicien, vol. I, table v, and p. 112. 3 Encyclopaedia Britanniea, gth edition, Art. Alphabet. but any historical proof would be extremely difficult, if not impossible.' The only definite attempt to give any such 'historical proof is, I believe, that which has been made by Professor Dieterich1. The essay of this learned Professor is unfortunately written in a spirit so wholly uncritical, that it is unnecessary to discuss his arguments or even to state them. This much, however, may be said with regard to any such attempt. The runes, in their earliest forms, must be affiliated to the Phosnician alphabet of some definite Time and Place. If, as Mr. Peile supposes, the runes were obtained from Phoenician traders, they must have come either from Sidon, Tyre, or Carthage. This must have...« less