—— Si forte necesse est Indiciis monstrare recentibus abdita rerum Fingere cinctutis non exaudita Cethegis Continget; dabiturque licentia sumta pudenter, Et nova fictaque nuper habebunt verba fidem, si Græco fonte cadant, parce detorta. _Hor. Ep. ad Pis. 48._
CHAPTER II. THE EUGUBINE TABLES—EXISTENCE OF OSCAN IN ITALY—BANTINE TABLE—PERUGIAN INSCRIPTION—ETRUSCAN ALPHABET AND WORDS—CHANT OF FRATRES ARVALES—SALIAN HYMN—OTHER MONUMENTS OF OLD LATIN—LATIN AND GREEK ALPHABETS COMPARED.
In the neighbourhood of Ugubio,[21] at the foot of the Apennines (the ancient Iguvium,) were discovered, in A. D. 1444, seven tables, commonly called the Eugubine Tables. They were in good preservation, and contained prayers and rules for religious ceremonies. Some of them were engraved in the Etruscan or Umbrian characters, others in Latin letters. Lepsius[22] has determined, from philological considerations, that the date of them must be as early as from A. U. C. 400,[23] and that the letters were engraved about two centuries later. A comparison of the two shows, in the Umbrian character, the letter _s_ standing in the place occupied by _r_ in the Latin, and _k_ in the place of _g_, because the Etruscan alphabet, with which the Umbrian is the same, did not contain the medial letters _B_, _G_, _D_. An analogous substitute is seen in the transition from the old to the more modern Latin. The names Furius and Caius, for example, were originally written Fusius and Gaius. _H_ is also introduced between two vowels, as stahito for stato, in the same way that in Latin aheneus is derived from _aes_. It also appears that the termination of the masculine singular was _o_: thus, orto = ortus; whilst that of the plural was or; _e. g._, subator = subacti; screhitor = scripti. This mode of inflexion illustrates the form amaminor for amamini, which was itself a participle used for amamini estis, an idiom analogous to the Greek τετυμμενοι εισι.
The following extract, with the translation by Donaldson,[24] together with a few words which present the greatest resemblance to the Latin, will suffice to give a general notion of the relation which the Umbrian bears to it:—
Teio subokau suboko, Dei Grabovi, okriper Fisiu, totaper Jiovina, erer nomne-per, erar, nomne-per; fos sei, paker sei, okre Fisei, Tote Jiovine, erer nomne, erar nomne: Tab. VI. (_Lepsius._) Te invocavi invoco, Jupiter Grabovi, pro monte Fisio, pro urbe Iguvina, pro illius nomine, pro hujus nomine, bonus sis, propitius sis, monti Fisio, urbi Iguvinæ, illius nomine, hujus nomine.