[1] In his short treatise "Of Prelatical Episcopacy," works iii. p.
72 (Pickering, 1851).
[2] _Theologisch. Tijdschrift_ (1892), 625-633.
[3] _Ib._ (1886) 114-136; _Die Ignatianischen Briefe_ (1892).
[4] _Ib._ (1893) 275-316.
[5] But there are still a few scholars, e.g. van Manen and Völter,
who prefer a date about 150 or later; van Loon goes as late as 175.
See article "Old-Christian Literature," _Ency. Bib._ iii. col. 3488.
IGNORAMUS (Latin for "we do not know," "we take no notice of"), properly
an English law term for the endorsement on the bill of indictment made
by a grand jury when they "throw out" the bill, i.e. when they do not
consider that the case should go to a petty jury. The expression is now
obsolete, "not a true bill," "no bill," being used. The expressions
"ignoramus jury," "ignoramus Whig," &c., were common in the political
satires and pamphlets of the years following on the throwing out of the
bill for high treason against the 2nd earl of Shaftesbury in 1681. The
application of the term to an ignorant person dates from the early part
of the 17th century. The _New English Dictionary_ quotes two examples
illustrating the early connexion of the term with the law or lawyers.
George Ruggle (1575-1622) in 1615 wrote a Latin play with the title
Ignoramus, the name being also that of the chief character in it,
intended for one Francis Brakin, the recorder of Cambridge. It is a
satire against the ignorance and pettifogging of the common lawyers of
the day. It was answered by a prose tract (not printed till 1648) by one
Robert Callis, serjeant-at-law. This bore the title of _The Case and
Argument against Sir Ignoramus of Cambridge_.
IGNORANCE (Lat. _ignorantia_, from _ignorare_, not to know), want of
knowledge, a state of mind which in law has important consequences. A
well-known legal maxim runs: _ignorantia juris non excusat_ ("ignorance
of the law does not excuse"). With this is sometimes coupled another
maxim: _ignorantia facti excusat_ ("ignorance of the fact excuses").
That every one who has capacity to understand the law is presumed to
know it is a very necessary principle, for otherwise the courts would be
continually occupied in endeavouring to solve problems which by their
very impracticability would render the administration of justice next to
impossible. It would be necessary for the court to engage in endless
inquiries as to the true inwardness of a man's mind, whether his state
of ignorance existed at the time of the commission of the offence,
whether such a condition of mind was inevitable or brought about merely
by indifference on his part. Therefore, in English, as in Roman law,
ignorance of the law is no ground for avoiding the consequences of an
act. So far as regards criminal offences, the maxim as to _ignorantia
juris_ admits of no exception, even in the case of a foreigner
temporarily in England, who is likely to be ignorant of English law. In
Roman law the harshness of the rule was mitigated in the case of women,
soldiers and persons under the age of twenty-five, unless they had good
legal advice within reach (_Dig._ xxii. 6. 9). Ignorance of a matter of
fact may in general be alleged in avoidance of the consequences of acts
and agreements, but such ignorance cannot be pleaded where it is the
duty of a person to know, or where, having the means of knowledge at his
disposal, he wilfully or negligently fails to avail himself of it (see
CONTRACT).
In logic, ignorance is that state of mind which for want of evidence is
equally unable to affirm or deny one thing or another. Doubt, on the
other hand, can neither affirm nor deny because the evidence seems
equally strong for both. For _Ignoratio Elenchi_ (ignorance of the
refutation) see FALLACY.
IGNORANTINES (_Frères Ignorantins_), a name given to the Brethren of the
Christian Schools (_Frères des Écoles Chrétiennes_), a religious
fraternity founded at Reims in 1680, and formally organized in 1683, by
the priest Jean Baptiste de la Salle, for the purpose of affording a
free education, especially in religion, to the children of the poor. In
addition to the three simple vows of chastity, poverty and obedience,
the brothers were required to give their services without any
remuneration and to wear a special habit of coarse black material,
consisting of a cassock, a hooded cloak with hanging sleeves and a
broad-brimmed hat. The name Ignorantine was given from a clause in the
rules of the order forbidding the admission of priests with a
theological education. Other popular names applied to the order are
_Frères de Saint-Yon_, from the house at Rouen, which was their
headquarters from 1705 till 1770, _Frères à quatre bras_, from their
hanging sleeves, and _Frères Fouetteurs_, from their former use of the
whip (_fouet_) in punishments. The order, approved by Pope Benedict
XIII. in 1724, rapidly spread over France, and although dissolved by the
National Assembly's decree in February 1790, was recalled by Napoleon I.
in 1804, and formally recognized by the French government in 1808. Since
then its members have penetrated into nearly every country of Europe,
and into America, Asia and Africa. They number about 14,000 members and
have over 2000 schools, and are the strongest Roman Catholic male order.
Though not officially connected with the Jesuits, their organization and
discipline are very similar.
See J. B. Blain, _La Vie du vénérable J. B. de la Salle_ (Versailles,
1887).
IGUALADA, a town of north-eastern Spain, in the province of Barcelona, on
the left bank of the river Noya, a right-hand tributary of the Llobregat,
and at the northern terminus of the Igualada-Martorell-Barcelona railway.
Pop. (1900) 10,442. Igualada is the central market of a rich agricultural
and wine-producing district. It consists of an old town with narrow and
irregular streets and the remains of a fortress and ramparts, and a new
town which possesses regular and spacious streets and many fine houses.
The local industries, chiefly developed since 1880, include the
manufacture of cotton, linen, wool, ribbons, cloth, chocolate, soap,
brandies, leather, cards and nails. The famous mountain and convent of
Montserrat or Monserrat (q.v.) is 12 m. E.
IGUANA, systematically _Iguanidae_ (Spanish quivalent of Carib _iwana_),
a family of pleurodont lizards, comprising about 50 genera and 300
species. With three exceptions, all the genera of this extensive family
belong to the New World, being specially characteristic of the
Neotropical region, where they occur as far south as Patagonia, while
extending northward into the warmer parts of the Nearctic regions as far
as California and British Columbia. The exceptional genera are
_Brachylophus_ in the Fiji Islands, _Hoplurus_ and _Chalarodon_ in
Madagascar. The iguanas are characterized by the peculiar form of their
teeth, these being round at the root and blade-like, with serrated edges
towards the tip, resembling in this respect the gigantic extinct reptile
_Iguanodon_. The typical forms belonging to this family are
distinguished by the large dewlap or pouch situated beneath the head and
neck, and by the crest, composed of slender elongated scales, which
extends in gradually diminishing height from the nape of the neck to the
extremity of the tail. The latter organ is very long, slender and
compressed. The tongue is generally short and not deeply divided at its
extremity, nor is its base retracted into a sheath; it is always moist
and covered with a glutinous secretion. The prevailing colour of the
iguanas is green; and, as the majority of them are arboreal in their
habits, such colouring is generally regarded as protective. Those on the
other hand which reside on the ground have much duller, although as a
rule equally protective hues. Some iguanas, however (e.g. _Anolis
carolinensis_), possess, to an extent only exceeded by the chameleon,
the power of changing their colours, their brilliant green becoming
transformed under the influence of fear or irritation, into more sombre
hues and even into black. They differ greatly in size, from a few inches
to several feet in length.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--Iguana.]
One of the largest and most widely distributed is the common iguana
(_Iguana tuberculata_), which occurs in the tropical parts of Central
and South America and the West Indies, with the closely allied _I.
rhinolophus_. It attains a length of 6 ft., weighing then perhaps 30
lb., and is of a greenish colour, occasionally mixed with brown, while
the tail is surrounded with alternate rings of those colours. Its food
consists of vegetable substances, mostly leaves, which it obtains from
the forest trees among whose branches it lives and in the hollows of
which it deposits its eggs. These are of an oblong shape about 1½ in. in
length, and are said by travellers to be very pleasant eating,
especially when taken raw, and mixed with farina. They are timid,
defenceless animals, depending for safety on the comparative
inaccessibility of their arboreal haunts, and their protective
colouring, which is rendered even more effective by their remaining
still on the approach of danger. But the favourite resorts of the iguana
are trees which overhang the water, into which they let themselves fall
with a splash, whatever the height of the tree, and then swim away, or
hide at the bottom for many minutes. Otherwise they exhibit few signs of
animal intelligence. "The iguana," says H. W. Bates (_The Naturalist on
the Amazons_), "is one of the stupidest animals I ever met. The one I
caught dropped helplessly from a tree just ahead of me; it turned round
for a moment to have an idiotic stare at the intruder and then set off
running along the path. I ran after it and it then stopped as a timid
dog would do, crouching down and permitting me to seize it by the neck
and carry it off." Along with several other species, notably _Ctenosura
acanthinura_, which is omnivorous, likewise called iguana, the common
iguana, is much sought after in tropical America; the natives esteem its
flesh a delicacy, and capture it by slipping a noose round its neck as
it sits in fancied security on the branch of a tree.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--Head of _Iguana rhinolophus_.]
Although chiefly arboreal, many of the iguanas take readily to the
water; and there is at least one species, _Amblyrhynchus cristatus_,
which leads for the most part an aquatic life. These marine lizards
occur only in the Galapagos Islands, where they are never seen more than
20 yds. inland, while they may often be observed in companies several
hundreds of yards from the shore, swimming with great facility by means
of their flattened tails. Their feet are all more or less webbed, but in
swimming they are said to keep these organs motionless by their sides.
Their food consists of marine vegetation, to obtain which they dive
beneath the water, where they are able to remain, without coming to the
surface to breathe, for a very considerable time. Though they are thus
the most aquatic of lizards, Darwin, who studied their habits during his
visit to those islands, states that when frightened they will not enter
the water. Driven along a narrow ledge of rock to the edge of the sea,
they preferred capture to escape by swimming, while if thrown into the
water they immediately returned to the point from which they started. A
land species belonging to the allied genus _Conolophus_ also occurs in
the Galapagos, which differs from most of its kind in forming burrows in
the ground.
IGUANODON, a large extinct herbivorous land reptile from the Wealden
formation of western Europe, almost completely known by numerous
skeletons from Bernissart, near Mons, Belgium. It is a typical
representative of the ornithopodous (Gr. for bird-footed) Dinosauria.
The head is large and laterally compressed with a blunt snout, nearly
terminal nostrils and relatively small eyes. The sides of the jaws are
provided with a close series of grinding teeth, which are often worn
down to stumps; the front of the jaws forms a toothless beak, which
would be encased originally in a horny sheath. When unworn the teeth are
spatulate and crimped or serrated round the edge, closely resembling
those of the existing Central American lizard, _Iguana_--hence the name
_Iguanodon_ (Gr. Iguana-tooth) proposed by Mantell, the discoverer of
this reptile, in 1825. The bodies of the vertebrae are solid; and they
are convexo-concave (i.e. _opisthocoelous_) in the neck and anterior
part of the back, where there must have been much freedom of motion. The
hindquarters are comparatively large and heavy, while the tail is long,
deep and more or less laterally compressed, evidently adapted for
swimming. The small and mobile fore-limbs bear four complete fingers,
with the thumb reduced to a bony spur. The pelvis and hind-limbs much
resemble those of a running bird, such as those of an emu or the extinct
moa; but the basal bones (metatarsals) of the three-toed foot remain
separate throughout life, thus differing from those of the running
birds, which are firmly fused together even in the young adult. No
external armour has been found. The reptile doubtless frequented
marshes, feeding on the succulent vegetation, and often swimming in the
water. Footprints prove that when on land it walked habitually on its
hind-limbs.
[Illustration: Skeleton of _Iguanadon bernissartensis_. (After Dollo.)]
The earliest remains of _Iguanodon_ were found by Dr G. A. Mantell in
the Wealden formation of Sussex, and a large part of the skeleton,
lacking the head, was subsequently discovered in a block of ragstone in
the Lower Greensand near Maidstone, Kent. These fossils, which are now
in the British Museum, were interpreted by Dr Mantell, who made
comparisons with the skeleton of _Iguana_, on the erroneous supposition
that the resemblance in the teeth denoted some relationship to this
existing lizard. Several of the bones, however, could not be understood
until the much later discoveries of Mr S. H. Beckles in the Wealden
cliffs near Hastings; and an accurate knowledge of the skeleton was only
obtained when many complete specimens were disinterred by the Belgian
government from the Wealden beds at Bernissart, near Mons, during the
years 1877-1880. These skeletons, which now form the most striking
feature of the Brussels Museum, evidently represent a large troop of
animals which were suddenly destroyed and buried in a deep ravine or
gully. The typical species, _Iguanodon mantelli_, measures 5 to 6 metres
in length, while _I. bernissartensis_ (see fig.) attains a length of 8
to 10 metres. They are found both at Bernissart and in the south of
England, while other species are also known from Sussex. Nearly complete
skeletons of allied reptiles have been discovered in the Jurassic and
Cretaceous rocks of North America.
REFERENCES.--G. A. Mantell, _Petrifactions and their Teaching_
(London, 1851); L. Dollo, papers in _Bull. Mus. Roy. d'Hist. Nat.
Belg._, vols. i.-iii. (1882-1884). (A. S. Wo.)
IGUVIUM (mod. Gubbio, q.v.), a town of Umbria, situated among the
mountains, about 23 m. N.N.E. of Perusia and connected with it by a
by-road, which joined the Via Flaminia near the temple of Jupiter
Appenninus, at the modern Scheggia. It appears to have been an important
place in pre-Roman times, both from its coins and from the celebrated
_tabulae Iguvinae_ (see below).
We find it in possession of a treaty with Rome, similar to that of the
Camertes Umbri; and in 167 B.C. it was used as a place of safe custody
for the Illyrian King Gentius and his sons (Livy xlv. 43). After the
Social War, in which it took no part, it received Roman citizenship. At
that epoch it must have received full citizen rights since it was
included in the tribus Clustumina (_C.I.L._ xi. e.g. 5838). In 49 B.C.
it was occupied by Minucius Thermus on behalf of Pompey, but he
abandoned the town. Under the empire we hear almost nothing of it.
Silius Italicus mentions it as subject to fogs. A bishop of Iguvium is
mentioned as early as A.D. 413. It was taken and destroyed by the Goths
in 552, but rebuilt with the help of Narses. The Umbrian town had three
gates only, and probably lay on the steep mountain side as the present
town does, while the Roman city lay in the lower ground. Here is the
theatre, which, as an inscription records, was restored by Cn. Satrius
Rufus in the time of Augustus. The diameter of the orchestra is 76½ ft.
and of the whole 230 ft., so that it is a building of considerable size;
the stage is well preserved and so are parts of the external arcades of
the auditorium. Not far off are ruins probably of ancient baths, and the
concrete core of a large tomb with a vaulted chamber within. (T. As.)
Of Latin inscriptions (_C.I.L._ xi. 5803-5926) found at Iguvium two or
three are of Augustan date, but none seem to be earlier. A Latin
inscription of Iguvium (_C.I.L._ xi. 5824) mentions a priest whose
functions are characteristic of the place "L. Veturius Rufio avispex
extispecus, sacerdos publicus et privatus."
The ancient town is chiefly celebrated for the famous _Iguvine_ (less
correctly _Eugubine_) _Tables_, which were discovered there in 1444,
bought by the municipality in 1456, and are still preserved in the town
hall. A Dominican, Leandro Alberti (_Descrizione d'Italia_, 1550),
states that they were originally nine in number, and an independent
authority, Antonio Concioli (_Statuta civitatis Eugubii_, 1673), states
that two of the nine were taken to Venice in 1540 and never reappeared.
The existing seven were first published in a careful but largely
mistaken transcript by Buonarotti in 1724, as an appendix to Dempster's
_De Etruria Regali_.[1]
The first real advance towards their interpretation was made by Otfried
Müller (_Die Etrusker_, 1828), who pointed out that though their
alphabet was akin to the Etruscan their language was Italic. Lepsius, in
his essay _De tabulis Eugubinis_ (1833), finally determined the value of
the Umbrian signs and the received order of the Tables, pointing out
that those in Latin alphabet were the latest. He subsequently published
what may be called the _editio princeps_ in 1841. The first edition,
with a full commentary based on scientific principles, was that of
Aufrecht and Kirchhoff in 1849-1851, and on this all subsequent
interpretations are based (Bréal, Paris, 1875; Bücheler, _Umbrica_,
Bonn, 1883, a reprint and enlargement of articles in Fleckeisen's
_Jahrbuch_, 1875, pp. 127 and 313). The text is everywhere perfectly
legible, and is excellently represented in photographs by the marquis
Ranghiasci-Brancaleone, published with Bréal's edition.
_Language._--The dialect in which this ancient set of liturgies is
written is usually known as Umbrian, as it is the only monument we
possess of any length of the tongue spoken in the Umbrian district
before it was latinized (see UMBRIA). The name, however, is certainly
too wide, since an inscription from Tuder of, probably, the 3rd
century B.C. (R. S. Conway, _The Italic Dialects_, 352) shows a final
-_s_ and a medial -_d_-, both apparently preserved from the changes
which befell these sounds, as we shall see, in the dialect of Iguvium.
On the other hand, inscriptions of Fulginia and Assisium (ibid.
354-355) agree very well, so far as they go, with Iguvine. It is
especially necessary to make clear that the language known as Umbrian
is that of a certain limited area, which cannot yet be shown to have
extended very far beyond the eastern half of the Tiber valley (from
Interamna Nahartium to Urvinum Mataurense), because the term is often
used by archaeologists with a far wider connotation to include all the
Italic, pre-Etruscan inhabitants of upper Italy; Professor Ridgeway,
for instance, in his _Early Age of Greece_, frequently speaks of the
"Umbrians" as the race to which belonged the Villanova culture of the
Early Iron age. It is now one of the most urgent problems in the
history of Italy to determine the actual historical relation (see
further ROME: _History, ad. init._) between the [Greek: 'Ombroi] of,
say, Herodotus and the language of Iguvium, of which we may now offer
some description, using the term Umbrian strictly in this sense.
Under the headings LATIN LANGUAGE and OSCA LINGUA there have been
collected (1) the points which separate all the Italic languages from
their nearest congeners, and (2) those which separate Osco-Umbrian
from Latin. We have now to notice (3) the points in which Umbrian has
diverged from Oscan. The first of them antedates by six or seven
centuries the similar change in the Romance languages (see ROMANCE
LANGUAGES).
(1) The palatalization of _k_ and _g_ before a following _i_ or _e_,
or consonant _i_ as in _tiçit_ (i.e. _diçit_) = Lat. _decet_; _muieto_
past part. passive (pronounced as though the _i_ were an English or
French _j_) beside Umb. imperative _mugatu_, Lat. _mugire_.
(2) The loss of final -_d_, e.g. in the abl. sing. fem. Umb. _tota_ =
Osc. _toutad_.
(3) The change of _d_ between vowels to a sound akin to _r_, written
by a special symbol q (_d_) in Umbrian alphabet and by RS in Latin
alphabet, e.g. _teda_ in Umbrian alphabet = _dirsa_ in Latin alphabet
(see below), "let him give," exactly equivalent to Paelignian _dida_
(see PAELIGNI).
(4) The change of -_s_- to -_r_- between vowels as in _erom_, "esse" =
Osc. _ezum_, and the gen. plur. fem. ending in -_aru_ = Lat. -_arum_,
Osc. -_azum_.
To this there appear a long string of exceptions, e.g. _asa_ = Lat.
_ara_. These are generally regarded as mere archaisms, and
unfortunately the majority of them are in words of whose origin and
meaning very little is known, so that (for all we can tell) in many
the -_s_- may represent -_ss_- or -_ps_- as in _osatu_ = Lat.
_operato_, cf. Osc. _opsaom_.
(5) The change of final -_ns_ to -_f_ as in the acc. plur. masc.
_vitluf_ = Lat. _vitulos_.
(6) In the latest stage of the dialect (see below) the change of final
-_s_ to -_r_, as in abl. plur. _arver_, _arviis_, i.e. "arvorum
frugibus."
(7) The decay of all diphthongs; _ai_, _oi_, _ei_ all become a
monophthong variously written _e_ and _i_ (rarely _ei_), as in the
dat. sing. fem. _tote_, "civitati"; dat. sing. masc. _pople_,
"populo"; loc. sing. masc. _onse_ (from *_om(e)sei_), "in umero." So
_au_, _eu_, _ou_ all become _o_, as in _ote_ = Osc. _auti_, Lat.
_aut_.
(8) The change of initial _l_ to _v_, as in _vutu_ = Lat. _lavito_.
Owing to the peculiar character of the Tables no grammatical statement
about Umbrian is free from difficulty; and these bare outlines of its
phonology must be supplemented by reference to the lucid discussion in
C. D. Buck's _Oscan and Umbrian Grammar_ (Boston, 1904), or to the
earlier and admirably complete _Oskischumbrische Grammatik_ of R. von
Planta (Strassburg, 1892-1897). Some of the most important questions
are discussed by R. S. Conway in _The Italic Dialects_, vol. ii. p.
495 seq.
Save for the consequences of these phonetic changes, Umbrian
morphology and syntax exhibit no divergence from Oscan that need be
mentioned here, save perhaps two peculiar perfect-formations with
-_l_- and -_nçi_-; as in _ampelust_, fut. perf. "impenderit,"
_combifiançiust_, "nuntiaverit" (or the like). Full accounts of the
accidence and syntax, so far as it is represented in the inscriptions,
will be found in the grammars of Buck and von Planta already
mentioned, and in the second volume of Conway, _op. cit._
_Chronology._ (I.) _The Relative Dates of the Tables._--At least four
periods in the history of the dialect can be distinguished in the
records we have left to us, by the help of the successive changes (a)
in alphabet and (b) in language, which the Tables exhibit. Of these
only the outstanding features can be mentioned here; for a fuller
discussion the reader must be referred to _The Italic Dialects_, pp.
400 sqq.
(a) _Changes in Alphabet._--Observe first that Tables I., II., III.
and IV., and the first two inscriptions of V. are in Umbrian
character; the Latin alphabet is used in the _Claverniur_ paragraph
(V. iii.), and the whole of VI. (_a_ and _b_) and VII. (_a_ and _b_).
What we may call the normal Umbrian alphabet (in which e.g. Table I.
_a_ is written) consists of the following signs, the writing being
always from right to left: [Symbols: A a, B b, D d] (i.e. a sound akin
to _r_ derived from _d_), [Symbols: E e, F v, Z z, H h, I i, K k] and
g, [Symbols: L l, M m, N n, P p, R r, S s X t] and d, V u and o,
[Symbols: F f, S s] (i.e. a voiceless palatal consonant.)
In the Latin alphabet, in which Tables VI. and VII. and the third
inscription of Table V. are written, _d_ is represented by RS, _g_ by
G, but _k_ by C, _d_ by D, _t_ by T, _v_ and _u_ by V but _o_ by O, s
by S, though the diacritic is often omitted. The interpunct is double
with the Umbrian alphabet, single and medial with the Latin.
Tables VI. and VII., then, and V. iii., were written later than the
rest. But even in the earlier group certain variations appear.
The latest form of the Umbrian alphabet is that of Table V. i. and
ii., where the abbreviated form of _m_ (^) and the angular and
undivided form of _k_ ([Symbols: k not K] are especially
characteristic.
Nearest to this is that of Tables III. and IV., which form a single
document; then that of I. (a) and (b); earliest would seem that of II.
(a) and II. (b). In II. _a_, 18 and 24, we have the archaic letter
_san_ (M = _s_) of the abecedaria (E. S. Roberts, _Int. Gr. Epig._ pp.
17 ff.), which appears in no other Italic nor in any Chalcidian
inscription, though it survived longer in Etruscan and Venetic use.
Against this may be set the use of [Symbol: O] for _t_ in I. _b_ 1,
but this appears also in IV. 20 and should be called rather Etruscan
than archaic. These characteristics of II. _a_ and _b_ would be in
themselves too slight to prove an earlier date, but they have perhaps
some weight as confirming the evidence of the language.
(b) _Changes in Language._--The evidence of date derived from changes
in the language is more difficult to formulate, and the inquiry calls
for the most diligent use of scientific method and critical judgment.
Its intricacy lies in the character of the documents before
us--religious formularies consisting partly of matter established in
usage long before they were written down in their present shape,
partly of additions made at the time of writing. The best example of
this is furnished by the expansion and modernisation of the
subject-matter of Table I. into Tables VI. and VII._a_. Hence we
frequently meet with forms which had passed out of the language that
was spoken at the time they were engraved, side by side with their
equivalents in that language. We may distinguish four periods, as
follows:
1. The first period is represented, not by any complete table, but by
the old unmodernised forms of Tables III. and IV., which show the
original guttural plosives unpalatalized, e.g. _kebu_ = Lat. _cibum_.
2. In the second period the gutturals have been palatalized, but there
yet is no change of final _s_ to _r_. This is represented by the rest
of III. and IV. and by II. (_a_ and _b_).
3. In the third period final _s_ has everywhere become _r_. This
appears in V. (i. and ii. and also iii.). Table I. is a copy or
redraft made from older documents during this period. This is shown by
the occasional appearance of _r_ instead of final _s_.
4. Soon after the dialect had reached its latest form, the Latin
alphabet was adopted. Tables VI. and VII._a_ contain an expanded form
of the same liturgical direction as Table I.
It is probable that further research will amend this classification in
detail, but its main lines are generally accepted.
(II.) _Actual Date of the Tables._--Only the leading points can be
mentioned here.
(i.) The Latin alphabet of the latest Tables resembles that of the
_Tabula Bantina_, and might have been engraved at almost any time
between 150 B.C. and 50 B.C. It is quite likely that the closer
relations with Rome, which began after the Social War, led to the
adoption of the Latin alphabet. Hence we should infer that the Tables
in Umbrian alphabet were at all events older than 90 B.C.
(ii.) For an upper limit of date, in default of definite evidence, it
seems imprudent to go back beyond the 5th century B.C., since neither
in Rome nor Campania have we any evidence of public written documents
of any earlier century. When more is known of the earliest Etruscan
inscriptions it may become possible to date the Iguvine Tables by
their alphabetic peculiarities as compared with their mother-alphabet,
the Etruscan. The "Tuscan name" is denounced in the comprehensive
curse of Table VI. b, 53-60, and we may infer that the town of Iguvium
was independent but in fear of the Etruscans at the time when the
curse was first composed. The absence of all mention of either Gauls
or Romans seems to prove that this time was at least earlier than 400
B.C.; and the curse may have been composed long before it was written
down.
The chief sources in which further information may be sought have been
already mentioned. (R. S. C.)