Institutio Oratoria

is also the servant of usage and therefore undergoes frequent change. I make no mention of the earliest times when our alphabet contained fewer letters [*]( The original alphabet consisted of twenty-one letters, and was increased to twenty-three by the addition of y and z. ) and their shapes differed from those which we now use, while their values also were different. For instance in Greek the letter o was sometimes long and short, as it is with us, and again was sometimes used to express the syllable

which is identical with its name. [*](i.e. the interjection O! )