Spurius Carvilius Ruga
Spurius Carvilius Ruga (fl. 230 BC) was the freedman of Spurius Carvilius Maximus Ruga. He is often credited with inventing the Latin 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.
Plutarch is our main source for these inventions, and Quintus Terentius Scaurus confirms the former in De Orthographia. The letter G was already in use before 230 BC; Wilhelm Paul Corssen theorized in Über Aussprache that what Plutarch really meant was that Ruga's elementary school was the first place to assign the C and G to their current phonemes of /k/ and /g/.
See also
Sources
- Quaestiones Romanae questions 54 and 59.
- Earliest Roman Divorces: Divergent Memories or Hidden Agendas? by Gary Martin
- The Origin of the Latin Letters G and Z by George Hempl