one has no right is the act of a
law-breaker.

 

The man who first framed these laws
for us, be he the islander Cadmus The story usually ran that Cadmus brought sixteen
letters from Phoenicia to Greece, and that four were added
to these by Palamedes and four more by Simonides (not the
poet, but a physician of Syracuse). Cadmus is here called
an islander because some versions of his story made him
come from Tyre, not Sidon. or Nauplius’ son
Palamedes(and some attribute this provision to Simonides), did not determine which of us should be first
and which second solely by putting us in the order
in which our places are now fixed, but they also
decided the qualities and powers that each of us has.
To you, jurors, they gave the greatest honour, because
you can be sounded by yourselves; to the Semivowels
they gave the next highest, because they need
something put with them before they can be heard;
and they prescribed that the last place of all should
belong to nine letters which have no sound at all by
themselves.
 The Greek "mutes” are nine in number. Sigma, as a
semivowel, claims higher rank. The Vowels should enforce these laws.