The Peloponnese

The Corinthian beta has been called an artificial derivation from pi, to avoid confusion with the epsilon. 1 I incline to think rather that it arose from an incorrect rendering of the primitive beta-type in which the ‘hooks’ are not closed (as in There, Naxos-Paros, Argos, Gortyn in Crete), the lower hook of the Corinthian beta being twisted in the reverse direction.2 This may have been done deliberately, because of the epsilon; but in Melos, where the epsilon is normal, the twisted beta is also used, and so it is perhaps more likely that it was an original error, and that the curious Corinthian epsilon, which I assume to be a doublet from closed heta, slipped into its form the more readily because there was no cause for confusion with beta. The proper direction should then be given by the top hook, but the distinction is not always observed (cf. the painter Timonidas, 15).

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