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 As in Phoenician, the difference in length was not originally made in writing.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
History of the Greek alphabet of the same name, he would have lived at the time of Oedipus. The third tripod bears the inscription again in hexameter verse: . (""Laodamas, while he reigned, dedicated this cauldron to Apollo, the sure of aim, as a lovely offering""). Hyginus recounts the following legend about the introduction of Phoenician letters to Greece: Some ancient Greek scholars argued that the Greek alphabet should not be attributed to the Phoenician alphabet. Diodorus Siculus in his Historical Library, Book 5, suggests that the Phoenicians merely changed the form and shape of earlier letters: In his book On the malice of Herodotus,