The letter stigma (?)

jernest@hendrickson.com
Wed, 18 Sep 1996 03:42:53 -0400

I suppose this shd go a a classics list, but anyway....
Smyth (p. 103, and the last line on p. 104A) indicates that the
stigma character was later (?) used in place of vaw as a
numeral (= 6). My old, beat-up Goodwin (para. 384)
similarly seems to suggest that stigma is a form of
vau.

Is stigma then simply a later way of writing vau? Or is it
a different letter/character? B. F. Cook's
little introduction to Greek epigraphy has a table showing
many various forms of the letters of the Greek alphabet,
but I don't see the stigma character listed as a variant of
vau or of any other letter. I find nothing pertaining to this
character in the LSJ entry for stigma.

Where else does one look for this sort of thing?

By the way, if the British Museum has now published
a volume in its Reading the Past series for papyrology
comparable to Cook's volume on epigraphy, I would
be glad to know about it. There seemed not to be one
in 1990 when I bought Cook.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
James D. Ernest
Ph.D. cand., Boston College; Academic editor, Hendrickson Publ.
S-MAIL: c/o Hendrickson Publishers, 137 Summit Street,
P. O. Box 3473, Peabody, MA 01961-3473 USA
FAX: 508/531-8146 PHONE: 508/532-6546
E-MAIL: ernest@mv.mv.com / jernest@hendrickson.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------