On Phoenician Letters

you insist that the Hebrew language itself, which is also that of the Phoenicians, should be taught at royal expense, and you imitate the origins of the entire world, even beyond the domain of sacred matters. For the ancient characters of the Hebrews are the oldest letters of the Gauls. Pliny wrote that there was a consensus among all nations (among whom the Gauls are the first) to use the letters of the Ionians. Herodotus, however, writing seriously and from the experience of his own age, says that the letters of the Ionians and the Phoenicians were the same, though they originated from the Phoenicians, who are recorded as the first inventors. Indeed, they were so ancient among the Phoenicians that their use is believed to be eternal and to surpass the memory of all letters. Furthermore, by the testimony of the same Pliny, it is established that the Latins and Greeks once had the same characters, as a tablet once written in Rome by the Athenian Nausicrata has left proof. In confirmation of this opinion, Strabo left it written that the Greeks