Palamedes

In Greek mythology, the inventor of writing. When Odysseus feigned madness to avoid joining the Greek expedition to the Trojan wars, Palamedes placed the hero's baby son in the track of his plough to trick him into revealing his sanity. In revenge, he was falsely denounced as a traitor by Odysseus and stoned to death by the Greek army.

Later Greek writers made Palamedes a sage, attributing the invention of lighthouses, dice, and several other artefacts to him, as well as the addition of the letters theta, xi, phi, and chi to the alphabet.