_Delta_ should be closely scrutinized. Its most ancient shape is an equilateral triangle, the sides being all of the same thickness ([symbol]). Cod. Claromontanus, though of the sixth century, is in this instance as simple as any: the Herculanean rolls, Codd. Vatican., Sinait., and the very old copy of the Pentateuch at Paris (Colbert) or “Cod. Sarravianus” and Leyden, much resemble it, only that sometimes the Herculanean sides are slightly curved, and the right descending stroke of Cod. Vatican, is thickened. In Cod. A begins a tendency to prolong the base on one or both sides, and to strengthen one or both ends by points. We see a little more of this in Cod. Rossanensis and in the palimpsest Homer of the fifth century, published by Cureton. The habit increases and gradually becomes confirmed in Codd. Ephraemi (No. 24), the Vatican Dio Cassius of the fifth or sixth century, in Cod. R, and particularly in N and E of the Acts (Nos. 4, 14, 25). In the oblong later uncials it becomes quite elaborate, e.g. Cod. B of the Apocalypse, or Nos. 7, 21, 36. On the Rosetta stone and in the Cod. Bezae the right side is produced beyond the triangle, and is produced and slightly curved in Hyperides, curved and strongly pointed in Cod. Z. _Epsilon_ has its angular form on the Rosetta marble and other inscriptions in stone; in the oldest manuscripts it consists as an uncial of a semicircle, from whose centre to the right of it a horizontal radius is drawn to the concave circumference. Thus it appears in the Herculanean rolls (only that here the radius is usually broken off before it meets the circle), in Codd. Frid-August., Vatican., the two Paris Pentateuchs (Colbert-Leyden fifth century, Coislin. sixth) and the Cotton Genesis. In Cod. Alex. a slight trace is found of the more recent practice of strengthening each of the three extremities with knobs, but only the radius at times in Cod. Rossanensis. The custom increases in Codd. Ephraemi, Bezae, and still more in Codd. NRZ, wherein the curve becomes greater than a semicircle. In Hyperides (and in a slighter degree in Cod. Claromon. No. 41) the shape almost resembles the Latin _e_. The form of this and the other round letters was afterwards much affected in the narrow oblong uncials: see Nos, 7, 16, 36.