L Majuscule Writing

L MAJUSCULE WRITING Capital Writing.—The Latin alphabet first appears in the epigraphic type of majuscule writing, known as capitals. These characters form the main stem from which developed all the branches of Latin writing. On the oldest monuments (the in scriptiones bello Hannibalico antiquiores of the Corpus Inscrip tionum Latinarum), it is far from showing the orderly regularity of the later period. Side by side with upright and square char acters are angular and sloping forms, sometimes very distorted, which seem to indicate the existence of an early cursive writing from which they would have been borrowed. Certain literary texts clearly allude to such a hand (Van Hoesen, Roman Cursive Writing, pp. 1-2). Later, the characters of the cursive type were progressively eliminated from formal inscriptions, and capital writing reached its perfection in the Augustan age.

Epigraphists divide the numerous inscriptions of this period into two quite distinct classes : tituli, or formal inscriptions engraved on stone in elegant and regular capitals, and acta, or legal texts, documents, etc., generally engraved on bronze in cramped and careless capitals. Palaeography inherits both these types. Re produced by scribes on papyrus or parchment, the elegant char acters of the inscriptions become the square capitals of the manu scripts, and the actuaria, as the writing of the acta is called, becomes the rustic capital.

Of the many books written in square capitals, the editions de luxe of ancient times, only a few fragments have survived, the most famous being pages from manuscripts of Virgil (Chatelain, Pal. des classiques latins, pl. LXI.–II., LXXV. ; Oxyrhynchus Papyri, viii., 1,098). The finest examples of rustic capitals, the use of which is attested by papyri of the first century (Zange meister and Wattenbach, Exempla, pl. I.–II. ), are to be found in manuscripts of Virgil (Ehrle, Fragm. Virgiliana, 1899; Pal. Soc., pl. 113-117; Archivio paleogr. ital., i., 98) and Terence (Pal. Soc., pl. 135). Neither of these forms of capital writing offers any difficulty in reading, except that no space is left between the words. Their dates are still uncertain, in spite of attempts to determine them by minute observation (Dziatzko, Untersuchungen; E. A. Lowe in the Classical Quarterly, vol. xix., p. 197).

The rustic capitals, more practical than the square forms, soon came into general use. This was the standard form of writing, so far as books are concerned, until the 5th century, when it was replaced by a new type, the uncial, which will be discussed below. Early Cursive Writing.—While the set book-hand, in square or rustic capitals, was used for the copying of books, the writing of every-day life, letters and documents of all kinds, was in a cursive form, the oldest examples of which are provided by the graffiti on walls at Pompeii (C.I.L., iv.), a series of waxen tablets, also discovered at Pompeii (C.I.L., iv., supplement), a similar series found at Verespatak in Transylvania (C. I. L., iii.)

and a number of papyri (Wessely, Schrifttafeln and Studien zur Pal., xiv. ; Oxyrhynchus Papyri, passim; Federici, Esempi di corsiva antica; etc.). From a study of a number of docu ments which exhibit transitional forms it appears that this cursive was originally simplified capital writing (Steffens, Lat. Pal., 2nd ed., pl. 3; Wessely, Studien, xiv., pl. viii., etc.). The evolution was so rapid, however, that at quite an early date the scriptura epistolaris of the Roman world can no longer be de scribed as capitals. By the first century, this kind of writing began to develop the principal characteristics of two new types: the uncial and the minuscule cursive. With the coming into use of writing surfaces which were smooth, or offered little re sistance, the unhampered haste of the writer altered the shape, size and position of the letters. In the earliest specimens of writ ing on wax, plaster or papyrus, there appears a tendency to repre sent several straight strokes by a single curve. The cursive writ ing thus foreshadows the specifically uncial forms. The same specimens show great inequality in the height of the letters ; the main strokes are prolonged upwards (D= b;25=d) or downwards (0\=q; In this direction, the cursive tends to become a minuscule hand.

Uncial Writing.

Although the characteristic forms of the uncial type appear to have their origin in the early cursive (Thompson, Latin Palaeography in Sandy's Companion, 2nd ed., p. 771; Van Hoesen, The Parentage and Birthdate of the Latin Uncial in Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philo logical Association, xlii.), the two hands are nevertheless quite distinct. The uncial is a libraria, closely related to the capital writing, from which it differs only in the rounding off of the angles of certain letters, principally a, E rn. It represents a compromise between the beauty and legibility of the capitals and the rapidity of the cursive, and is clearly an artificial product. It was certainly in existence by the latter part of the 4th century, for a number of manuscripts of that date are written in perfect uncial hands (Exempla, pl. XX.). It presently supplanted the capitals and appears in numerous manuscripts which have sur vived from the 5th, 6th and 7th centuries, when it was at its height. (A list is given in Traube, Vorlesungen, i., 171-261, and numerous reproductions in Zangemeister and Wattenbach's Ex empla, and in Chatelain, Uncialis scriptura.) By this time it had become an imitative hand, in which there was generally no room for spontaneous development. It remained noticeably uniform over a long period. It is difficult therefore to date the manuscripts by palaeographical criteria alone. The most that can be done is to classify them by centuries, on the strength of tenuous data (Chatelain, Unc. script., explanatio tabularum). The earliest uncial writing is easily distinguished by its simple and monumental character from the later hands, which become progressively stiff and affected.