Spurius Carvilius Ruga was the freedman

Freedman

A freedman is a former slave who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means. Historically, slaves became freedmen either by manumission or emancipation ....

 of Spurius Carvilius Maximus Ruga

Spurius Carvilius Maximus Ruga

Spurius Carvilius S. f. C. n. Maximus Ruga was Roman consul in 234 and 228 BC. Spurius Carvilius Ruga, the schoolteacher, was his freedman.-Consulships:...

. He is often credited with inventing the Latin letter G

G

G is the seventh letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter 'G' was introduced in the Old Latin period as a variant of ⟨c⟩ to distinguish voiced, from voiceless, . The recorded originator of ⟨g⟩ is freedman Spurius Carvilius Ruga, the first Roman to open a fee-paying school,...

. His invention would have been quickly adopted in the Roman Republic

Roman Republic

The Roman Republic was the period of the ancient Roman civilization where the government operated as a republic. It began with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, traditionally dated around 508 BC, and its replacement by a government headed by two consuls, elected annually by the citizens and...

, because the letter C

C

Ĉ or ĉ is a consonant in Esperanto orthography, representing the sound .Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for all four of its postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets...

 was, at the time, confusingly used both for the /k/ and /g/ sounds. Ruga was also the first man in recorded history to open a private elementary school

Elementary school

An elementary school or primary school is an institution where children receive the first stage of compulsory education known as elementary or primary education. Elementary school is the preferred term in some countries, particularly those in North America, where the terms grade school and grammar...

.

Plutarch

Plutarch

Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...

 is our main source for these inventions, and Quintus Terentius Scaurus

Quintus Terentius Scaurus

Quintus Terentius Scaurus, Latin grammarian, flourished during the reign of Hadrian .He was the author of an ars grammatica and commentaries on Horace, Virgil's Aeneid and perhaps Plautus...

 confirms the former in De Orthographia. The letter G was already in use before 230 BC; Wilhelm Paul Corssen

Wilhelm Paul Corssen

Wilhelm Paul Corssen was a German philologist noted for his work on Latin and Etruscan topics.- Biography :Corssen was born in Bremen and, after his merchant father moved to Schwedt in the Kingdom of Prussia, received his school education there...

theorized in Über Aussprache that what Plutarch really meant was that Ruga's elementary school was the first place to assign the C and G to their current phonemes of /k/ and /g/.

Sources

• Quaestiones Romanae questions 54 and 59.
• Earliest Roman Divorces: Divergent Memories or Hidden Agendas? by Gary Martin
• The Origin of the Latin Letters G and Z by George Hempl