Roman cursive

Roman cursive, old and new

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.

Old Roman cursive

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 Latin alphabet, and even by 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: 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)

Cursive handwriting from the reign of Claudius (41 to 54 AD):
vobis · vidétur · p · c · décernám[us · ut · etiam]
prólátis · rebus iis · iúdicibus · n[ecessitas · iudicandi]
imponátur qui · intrá rerum [· agendárum · dies]
incoháta · iudicia · non · per[egerint · nec]
defuturas · ignoro · fraudes · m[onstrósa · agentibus]
multas · adversus · quas · exc[ogitáuimus]...

As the above extract shows, Old Roman cursive was considered difficult to read and roundly mocked even in its heyday, and is now considered almost illegible; the current cursive form of the Latin script has accordingly 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" is a full height letter (like the "s"), "p" and "t" are very similar, and "v" is written above the baseline, resembling an inverted chevron.[1]

New Roman cursive

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 readers; "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. These letter forms were in part the basis for the medieval script known as Carolingian minuscule, which was developed at Aachen and in Tours in the 9th century and propagated throughout Charlemagne's empire in a deliberate attempt to unify handwriting, and whose revival in the Renaissance, after it had evolved into the relatively illegible blackletter and fallen out of use, 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] Gaelic type is an example of a later usage of uncial.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Oxford, Scripts at Vindolanda page 2 page 3
  2. ↑ Oxford, Scripts at Vindolanda: Historical context.
  3. ↑ Jan-Olaf Tjäder, (Lund, 1955).
  4. ↑ Oxford, Vindolanda Tablets

References

Further reading

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.