This explanation of the history of writing traces writing from the use of "Counting tokens," to the development of the Roman alphabet. The pictures of how writing has progressed over time is very interesting and helpful.

The column was adorned with the brazen beaks of the captured Carthaginian vessels. Part of the inscription reciting the achievements of the Roman fleet has been preserved.-Webster, 1913

Flavius Josephus was a strange amalgamation of Jew, Greek, and Roman, admittedly not what he should have been, either as a teacher of Mosiac law, as a patriot, or as a public man; and yet he performed successfully what he could not have...