Page "Alphabet" Paragraph 13

The Greek alphabet, in its Euboean form, was carried over by Greek colonists to the Italian peninsula, where it gave rise to a variety of alphabets used to write the Italic languages.

One of these became the Latin alphabet, which was spread across Europe as the Romans expanded their empire.

Even after the fall of the Roman state, the alphabet survived in intellectual and religious works.

It eventually became used for the descendant languages of Latin ( the Romance languages ) and then for most of the other languages of Europe.