Editing Alpha (section)

===Plutarch===
[[Plutarch]], in ''[[Moralia]]'',<ref>Symposiacs, Book IX, questions II & III [http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/p/plutarch/symposiacs/chapter9.html#section91 On-line text] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081013230602/http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/p/plutarch/symposiacs/chapter9.html#section91 |date=13 October 2008 }} at Adelaide library</ref> presents a discussion on why the letter alpha stands first in the alphabet. Ammonius asks Plutarch what he, being a [[Boeotia]]n, has to say for [[Cadmus]], the [[Phoenicia]]n who reputedly settled in [[Thebes (Greece)|Thebes]] and introduced the alphabet to Greece, placing ''alpha'' first because it is the Phoenician name for [[ox]]—which, unlike [[Hesiod]],<ref>Hesiod, in ''[[Works and Days]]'' (see on [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0132:card=405 Perseus Project] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210117133713/http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0132%3Acard%3D405 |date=17 January 2021 }}), advises the early Greek farmers, "First of all, get a house, then a woman and third, an ox for the plough."</ref> the Phoenicians considered not the second or third, but the first of all necessities. "Nothing at all," Plutarch replied. He then added that he would rather be assisted by [[Lamprias]], his own grandfather, than by [[Dionysus]]' grandfather, i.e. Cadmus. For Lamprias had said that the first articulate sound made is "alpha", because it is very plain and simple—the air coming off the mouth does not require any motion of the tongue—and therefore this is the first sound that children make.

According to Plutarch's natural order of attribution of the [[vowel]]s to the [[planet]]s, alpha was connected with the [[Moon]].