History of the Greek alphabet consonant letter, rather than seemingly have two exceptions in spelling. Greek, like Phoenician, made a distinction for vowel length; indeed, Greek had five short vowels and seven long vowels, but only five vowel letters. As in Phoenician, the difference in length was not originally made in writing. However, by the 6th century BC the letter eta (not needed for a consonant in eastern dialects of Greek, which lacked ) came to stand for the long vowel , and a new letter, omega, was developed for long . The provenance of omega is not known, but it is generally assumed to
Seventh Letter was any letter from them to Plato, he says. Nevertheless, the "Seventh Letter" has recently been argued to be spurious by prominent scholars such as Malcolm Schofield, Myles Burnyeat, George Boas, Terence Irwin, and Julia Annas. According to Annas, the "Seventh Letter" is "such an unconvincing production that its acceptance by many scholars is best seen as indicating the strength of their desire to find, behind the detachment of the dialogues, something, no matter what, to which Plato is straightforwardly committed." The "Seventh Letter" touches upon a variety of themes, not always in an organized fashion. This article follows Bury