Note 38 — Chapter XVIII · OLYMPIA

The old letters Koppa (ϙ) and Sampi (ϡ) were used to brand the haunches of blooded horses. The letter ϙ, used as an abbreviation for Korinthos, when obsolete in many parts of Greece, was retained in the Corinthian alphabet. It had been carried to Italy by the early Greek colonists and so passed into our alphabet as the letter Q.

Young Phidippides in the Clouds of Aristophanes had plunged his father into debt by his race-track operations and had in his stables a racer of this Koppa breed bought with money borrowed from the usurer Pasias.