[Footnote 10: In the year 1444, seven or eight tables of
brass were dug up between Cortona and Gubio. A part of
these (for the rest is Etruscan) represents the primitive
state of the Pelasgic letters and language, which are
ascribed by Herodotus to that district of Italy, (l. i. c.
56, 57, 58;) though this difficult passage may be explained
of a Crestona in Thrace, (Notes de Larcher, tom. i. p. 256 -
261.) The savage dialect of the Eugubine tables ^! has
exercised, and may still elude, the divination of criticism;
but the root is undoubtedly Latin, of the same age and
character as the Saliare Carmen, which, in the time of
Horace, none could understand. The Roman idiom, by an
infusion of Doric and Aeolic Greek, was gradually ripened
into the style of the xii. tables, of the Duillian column,
of Ennius, of Terence, and of Cicero, (Gruter. Inscript.
tom. i. p. cxlii. Scipion Maffei, Istoria Diplomatica, p.
241 - 258. Bibliotheque Italique, tom. iii. p. 30 - 41, 174
- 205. tom. xiv. p. 1 - 52.)
Note: The Eugubine Tables have exercised the ingenuity of
the Italian and German critics; it seems admitted (O.
Muller, die Etrusker, ii. 313) that they are Tuscan. See
the works of Lanzi, Passeri, Dempster, and O. Muller. - M]