| The family tree of an alphabet is a reflection of the history of civilizations, marked at every stage by the fortunes of empires and the clash of arms.It was the Roman soldiers, not the scholars who brought the alphabet to Britain and the rest of Europe; and if Charles Martel had not beaten back the advancing armies of the Moslem Empire at Poiters in 733 a.d. this might have well been printed in Arabic rather than Roman characters. The administration of nations and empires has always provided one of the most powerful incentives for change in the art of writing and the recording of information. |
