The celebrated Eugubian tables were so called from having been found at Eugubium (Gubbio) a city in ancient Umbria, near the foot of the Apennines, where they were dug up in 1444. When first discovered, they were believed to be in the Egyptian language; but it was afterwards observed that five of the seven tables were in the Etruscan character and language, or rather in the Umbrian dialect of that tongue, and the other two in Roman letters, though in a rustic jargon, between Latin and Etruscan, with such mixture of each, as might be expected from an increased intercourse of the nations, and the subjugation of the one by the other.(95) The two tables in the Latin character were written towards the close of the sixth century of Rome, and those in the Etruscan letters a short while previous. So little, however, was the Etruscan language fixed or understood, even in the middle of last century, when the Etruscan rage was at its height in Italy, that Bonarota believed that those tables contained treaties of the ancient Italian nations—Gori, an Oscan poem, and Maffei, legal enactments, till Passerius at length discovered that they consisted solely of ordinances for the performance of sacred rites and religious ceremonies.(96) On comparing the fragments of the _Leges Regiæ_ with the Duillian and Scipian inscriptions, it does not appear that the Roman language, however greatly it may have varied, had either improved or approached much nearer to modern Latin in the fifth century than in the time of the kings. Short and mutilated as these laws and inscriptions are, they still enable us to draw many important conclusions with regard to the general state of the language during the existence of the monarchy, and the first ages of the republic. It has already been mentioned that the diphthong _ai_ was employed where _ae_ came to be afterwards substituted, as aide for æde; _ei_ instead of _i_, as castreis for castris; and _oi_ in place of _œ_, as coilum for cœlum. The vowel _e_ is often introduced instead of _o_, as hemo for homo, while, on the other hand, _o_ is sometimes used instead of _e_, as vostrum for vestrum; and Scipio Africanus is said to have been the first who always wrote the _e_ in such words(97). _U_ is frequently changed into _o_, as honc for hunc, sometimes into _ou_, as abdoucit for abducit, and sometimes to _oi_, as oino for uno. On the whole, it appears that the vowels were in a great measure used indiscriminately, and often, especially in inscriptions, they were altogether omitted, as bne for bene, though sometimes, again, an _e_ final was added, as face for fac, dice for dic. As to the consonants,—_b_ at the beginning of a word was _du_, as duonorum for bonorum, and it was _p_ at the middle or end, as opsides for obsides. The letter _g_ certainly does not appear in those earliest specimens of the Latin language—the hymn of the _Fratres Arvales_, and _Leges Regiæ_, where _c_ is used in its place. Plutarch says, that this