Spurius Carvilius Ruga

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Spurius Carvilius Ruga (possibly 600 BCE or 230 BCE) was a semi-legendary freedman living in Rome who invented the letter G. His invention would have been quickly adopted in the Roman Republic because the letter C was, at the time, confusingly used both for the /k/ and /g/ sounds. Ruga was also the first man in recorded history to open a private elementary school, and allegedly the first to divorce his wife.

Plutarch is our only source for the first and second inventions. Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Aulus Gellius both attest to the story of the divorce. According to Dionysius' account,

Spurius Carvilius, a man of distinction, was the first to divorce his wife ... yet because of his action, though it was based on necessity, he was ever afterwards hated by the people.

However, their date of 230 BCE for Ruga's divorce is somewhat absurd, because the Twelve Tables written in 450 BCE include a provision for divorce. There is no consensus as to how many of Ruga's alleged inventions should be attributed to him, but no other ancient text claims other inventors.

[edit] Sources

• Quaestiones Romanae questions 54 and 59.
• Earliest Roman Divorces: Divergent Memories or Hidden Agendas? by Gary Martin