Latin Orthography

[vir litterarum]

Does anyone know why Greek initial rho with the rough breathing in Latin is written with the "h" postponed instead of prefixed, i.e. rh- instead of hr-?

[Alatius]

If the pronunciation was a voiceless consonant, both "hr" and "rh" could be said to equally well (or badly) reflect the pronunciation. I'd guess the main reason would be to bring it in line with the transcriptions of the aspirated consonants, theta, phi and chi, but it's only a guess.

[modus.irrealis]

It was also Greek practice -- you can see here about how ?h, μh, λh were used in in Attic inscriptions, which also mentions about Latin occasionally using hr as well.

Maybe rh was not only voiceless but also followed by a puff of air like the aspirated stops.

[vir litterarum]

William Sidney Allen seems to believe that in Classical Latin pronunciation r=rh.

http://books.google.com/books?id=aexkj_ ... 7_obCkbjfA.