Roman cursive (or Latin cursive) is a form of handwriting (or a script) used in ancient Rome and to some extent into the Middle Ages. It is customarily divided into old (or ancient) cursive, and new cursive.
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Old Roman cursive, also called majuscule cursive and capitalis cursive, was the everyday form of handwriting used for writing letters, by merchants writing business accounts, by schoolchildren learning the Roman alphabet, and even emperors issuing commands. A more formal style of writing was based on Roman square capitals, but cursive was used for quicker, informal writing. It was most commonly used from about the 1st century BC to the 3rd century AD, but it probably existed earlier than that. In the early 2nd century BC, the comedian Plautus, in Pseudolus, makes reference to the illegibility of cursive letters:
Calidorus: Cape has tabellas, tute hinc narrato tibi quae me miseria et cura contabefacit.
Pseudolus: Mos tibi geretur. Sed quid hoc, quaeso?
Calidorus: Quid est?
Pseudolus: Ut opinor, quaerunt litterae hae sibi liberos: alia aliam scandit.
Calidorus: Ludis iam ludo tuo?
Pseudolus: Has quidem pol credo nisi Sibylla legerit, interpretari alium posse neminem.
Calidorus: Cur inclementer dicis lepidis litteris lepidis tabellis lepida conscriptis manu?
Pseudolus: An, opsecro hercle, habent quas gallinae manus? Nam has quidem gallina scripsit.
Calidorus: Take these letters, then tell yourself what misery and concern are wasting me away.
Pseudolus: I will do this for you. But what is this, I ask?
Calidorus: What's wrong?
Pseudolus: In my opinion, these letters are seeking children for themselves: one mounts the other.
Calidorus: Are you mocking me with your teasing?
Pseudolus: Indeed, by Pollux I believe that unless the Sibyl can read these letters, nobody else can understand them.
Calidorus: Why do you speak harshly about these charming letters and charming tablets, written by a charming hand?
Pseudolus: By Hercules I beg you, do even hens have hands like these? For indeed a hen wrote these letters.
(Plautus, Pseudolus, 21–30)
Old Roman cursive is very difficult to read for modern people used to the current cursive forms of the 'Latin' script, which have evolved beyond recognition. The script uses many ligatures, and some letters are unrecognizable – "a" looks like an uncial "a", but with the left stroke still straight, "b" and "d" are hard to distinguish, "e" spans the whole line, "p" and "t" are very similar, and "v" is written above the baseline, almost resembling a chevron.[1]
New Roman cursive, also called minuscule cursive or later Roman cursive, developed from old Roman cursive. It was used from approximately the 3rd century to the 7th century, and uses letter forms that are more recognizable to modern eyes; "a", "b", "d", and "e" have taken a more familiar shape, and the other letters are proportionate to each other rather than varying wildly in size and placement on a line. This evolved into the medieval script known as Carolingian minuscule, which was used in 9th century France and Germany in the imperial chancery, and whose revival in the Renaissance forms the basis of our modern lowercase letters. The uncial and half-uncial scripts also most likely developed from this script; "a", "g", "r", and "s" are particularly similar.[2]
According to Jan-Olaf Tjäder, new Roman cursive influenced the development of not only uncial, but of all the other scripts used in the Middle Ages.[3][4]
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