CADMEAN LETTERS, the sixteen ancient Greek or Ionic characters, such as they were first brought by Cadmus from Phœnicia, whence Herodotus (v. 58, &c.) calls them also Phœnician Letters. These were—\alpha, \beta, \gamma, \delta, \epsilon, \zeta, \eta, \iota, \kappa, \lambda, \mu, \nu, \omicron, \pi, \rho, \sigma, \tau, \upsilon. According to some writers, Cadmus was not the inventor, nor even the importer, but only the modeller and reformer, of the Greek letters; and it was from this circumstance they acquired the appellation of Cadmean or Phœnician Letters; whereas they had previously been called Pelasgian Letters.