UMBRIA CAPTA. 



221 



is the modern name of Tguvium. It has been maintained that 

 those Tablets which were made, as Coacioli asserts, ex aere 

 purissimo, were originally nine in number. Two of the Tablets 

 which were conveyed to Venice in 1540, have, it is to be feared, 

 been irrecoverably lost. The seven that remain are preserved in the 

 Palazzo Municipale of Gubbio. Tablets I., 11. , V. and YI. are 

 engraved on both sides. A blank space is left on one side of Tablet 

 II. and V. A few lines merely are engraved on one side of Tablet 

 YII. The Inscriptions on Tablets VI. and VII. and nearly all the 

 Inscriptions on one side of Tablet V. are in Roman letters. 

 According to the computation of Aufrecht and KirchofF : 



Table VI., a, has 59 lines. 



Table VI., b, has 65 lilies. 



Table VII., a, has 54 lines. 



Table VII., b, has 4 lines. 



Table v., b, has 11 lines. 

 There are thus 193 lines in the Umbi-ian portion of the Eugubine 

 Tables. 



In his preface to his Les Tables Eugubines, Professor Breal gives 

 an interesting account of the various efforts which have been made 

 to interj)ret those Tables. It is noteworthy, from a Celtic point of 

 view, that there appeared in 1772 a work by Stanislas Bardetti, in 

 which he endeavoured to explain the Umbrian Inscriptions princi- 

 pally by the aid of Anglo-Saxon, old High German and Celtic. In 

 an article on the Eugubine Tables which occurs in the Encyclopaedia 

 Britannica, it is stated among other things that " Aufrecht and Kirch ■ 

 hoff, summing up the labours of their predecessors and working 

 according to strict scientific method, bi'ought the interpretation of the 

 Tables to a degree of perf(;ction that could hardly have been hoped 

 for, though there still remained in mattei's of detail sufficient scope 

 for such investigators as Breal, Ebel, Corssen, etc." Professor 

 Breal's Les Tables Eugubines was published in 1875. As, in addition 

 to his own unambiguous asseverations, he has come to be I'egarded 

 as having at last succeeded in giving an intelligible and satisfactory 

 solution of the Umbrian Inscriptions, it is advisable to insert here 

 the conclusions at which he has arrived. " The Eugubine Tables 

 are the acts of a Corporation of priests who had their seats at 

 Iguvium, and whose authority appears to have extended over a some- 



