The Coptic alphabet and the Gothic alphabet were two late and artificial inventions, due entirely to a holy rage for producing the Bible in the language of the Egyptians and the Goths. The two Slavonic alphabets likewise were late scripts, invented for the purpose of translating the Bible into Slovene. The Armenian alphabet (and out of it the Georgian) had a similar origin, and seems to have had some relationship to the Slav Glagolitic. They are both attributed to the fifth century. _Writing in Italy during the first five centuries of the Christian era_ We have not as full a knowledge as could be wished for of the ordinary styles of writing under the Roman empire. The books of the fourth and fifth centuries which are extant show that calligraphy was then flourishing in great splendour, so far as capitals and uncials were concerned; and the coins and inscriptions of the three preceding centuries show us Roman capitals at their best. That rustic capitals were used in the first century is proved by the Herculanean remains, and that the fashion of writing in square capitals, {26}rustic capitals, and uncials was still practised in Italy down to the eighth century, we have sufficient grounds for knowing. But as to the style of handwriting used in books of which editions of perhaps a few hundred copies were issued--such, for example, as the edition of his own epigrams which Martial found at Lyons--we can only form conjectures. The semi-uncials of the fifth and sixth centuries, which grew into the minuscules of the seventh and eighth, must have been as much needed in the first century as the sixth, but there is no trace of them. The Roman cursive hand, upright or backsloped, that appears in the few extant tablets and wall-inscriptions of the first and second centuries, would have been too difficult for the readers who bought books to enjoy them, and would assuredly have served as an obstacle to their sale. It resembles rather the charter hand of later days than the minuscule writing of books, but the letters are unconnected, and there is no trace of any attempt at neatness. It is indeed almost illegible, without slow and painful decipherment. One striking peculiarity is the _b_, which has frequently the shape of _d_, a form that was retained in the official diplomatic hand of the fifth century. Such as it was, however, the cursive hand would have had considerable influence in shaping the semi-uncial or minuscule writing, which must have existed before it was adopted by the Irish in the fifth century and most other barbarians in the sixth. That semi-uncial, although we find no examples of its use in the empire before the end of the fifth century, had evidently been the immediate parent of the first Irish, which only differs from it in the superior evenness and regularity of the latter. It included the _g_, _r_, _s_, _t_, which are usually looked upon as special and characteristic letters of the Irish and Anglo-Saxon alphabet.