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Evidence suggests that they got it from the Etruscans, a small civilization whose territory extended from northern Italy down past Rome, where their kings once ruled, probably around the 7th century BC.The last Etruscan king to rule in Rome was ousted when the Roman Republic was founded in 509 BC, although the Etruscan culture and art tended to influence Rome up to the 4rd century BC.And the Etruscans got their alphabet from the Greeks, of course, since EVERYONE in that area borrowed from the Greeks (since, like Alexander the Great).
There was not a Roman alphabet. There was the Latin alphabet, which was the alphabet of the ancient Romans (they were Latins) and the other Latins. Modern western European languages have adapted and adopted the Latin alphabet. In English the only letters which do not come from the Latin alphabet are J, U and W.
The Latin and other Italic peoples adopted the Greek alphabet when the Greeks established colonies (settlements) in southern Italy in the 8th century BC. The arrival of the Greeks had a civilising impact on all the Italic peoples they came in contact with. These peoples realised the usefulness of the Greek alphabet for the development of their written languages. Some different characters were created as adaptation to the phonetics (sounds) of their languages which differed from that of the Greeks. Archaic Latin, like all Old Italic alphabets in Italy (Etruscan, Faliscan, Oscan, Umbrian, Picene, Messapic and Venetic) is thought to have adopted the Cumae alphabet. Cumae was the northernmost Greek settlement in Italy. This alphabet in its turn was a variation of the Western Greek alphabet, one of the three archaic Greek alphabets (the other two were the Cretese and the Ionic). The Western one originated from the island of Euoboea, Boeotia and much of the Peloponnese. These were areas many of the Greek settlers in Italy came from. It is thought that archaic Latin adopted 21 of the 29 Etruscan letters. The Latin alphabet evolved into what has been called classical Latin alphabet. This adopted two more Greek letters.
The last etruscan ruler was tarquinius superbus
How was rome rulled differently when the etruscan king was expelled? Answer this question…