On the Bishops of Gubbio

Narnia and Iguvium, once hostile
with damp mists. ( al. Inginum ) a) Sil. Ital. l. viii.

For who would have believed it to be so hostile with damp mists that it should be named for them, rather than from the nature of the place, if it were a town situated on a very high mountain? But if it occupied that plain which I mentioned, no one would wonder at it, and would easily understand that that place, closed in on more than one side by mountains, was most suitable for nourishing dense vapors and mists, especially if stagnant waters were not far off, which indeed were not lacking at one time, but were later diverted elsewhere and dried up, which the very naming of the suburban priesthood of Saint Mary in Padule, not very far away, abundantly demonstrates. And from this it is easy to understand how Silius could call Iguvium "once hostile with damp mists," which of course it was not in his time, since the marsh from which hostile vapors used to emerge had already been dried up.

V. The name of this illustrious city, in the most ancient language of either the Italics or the Etruscans, who ruled widely through Umbria, and indeed through almost the whole of Italy before the Romans, was not Eugubium, which a later and inferior age introduced, but Ikuvium, whence its inhabitants were called Ikuvini. Hannibal Oliverius of Pesaro, a man of noble birth born for the more elegant studies, was the first of all to discover this ancient name of the people of Gubbio. For he asserted to our people of Gubbio, unconquered b) Olivier. Spiegaz. di alcuni monum. degli antichi Pelasgi. p. 16., a copper coin from the museum of the Grand Duke, published at the end of Etruria Regalis, in which this word Ikuvini, understood by no one before that time, is read expressed in those letters which we are accustomed to call Etruscan. I saw a similar coin last year when I was in Perugia at the house of the most noble Count Diamante Montemellinus, an excellent judge and most diligent collector of such elegancies, from whom I also recently obtained its impression, to be produced in the following chapter along with other monuments of the people of Gubbio.

VI. But that old name Ikuvium, gifted to Latinity, underwent hardly any change; for the Latins said Iguvium and Iguvini with hardly one letter changed. I bring forward as witnesses many ancient inscriptions, in one of which is L. SABINUS L. L. ORTUS AB. IGV- VIO c) Cap. seq.. In another likewise is M. FVLLONIUS. QVINQVEN. COLLEGI. FA- BRUM. IGVVINORUM d) Ibid.. Again in another, once dug up at Foligno, which has been published more than once, is CIVITAS. FOROFLA. FVLGINIA. ITEMQVE. IGVVINORVM e) A Manut. Ortograph. v. Felix p. 340. 45. For a long time, indeed, the learned have observed that both the Latin...