History of the Greek alphabet Plutarch criticizes Herodotus for prejudice and misrepresentation. Furthermore, he argues that "Gephyraei" were Euboeans or Eretrians and he doubts the reliability of Herodotus' sources. Plutarch and other ancient Greek writers credited the legendary Palamedes of Nauplion on Euboea with the invention of the supplementary letters not found in the original Phoenician alphabet. The distinction between "Eta" and "Epsilon" and between "Omega" and "Omicron", adopted in the Ionian standard, was traditionally attributed to Simonides of Ceos (556-469). Plutarch goes further back to describe an older Greek writing system, similar as he attested to the Egyptian writing. In his “Discourse Concerning Socrates’s
Greek alphabet the Thirty Tyrants. Because of Eucleides's role in suggesting the idea to adopt the Ionian alphabet, the standard twenty-four-letter Greek alphabet is sometimes known as the "Eucleidean alphabet". Roughly thirty years later, the Eucleidean alphabet was adopted in Boeotia and it may have been adopted a few years previously in Macedonia. By the end of the fourth century BC, it had displaced local alphabets across the Greek-speaking world to become the standard form of the Greek alphabet. When the Greeks adapted the Phoenician alphabet, they took over not only the letter shapes and sound values, but also the names by