IGUVIUM
(Gubbio) Umbria, Italy.
A hill
town on the upper Tiber system, it originally commanded
an important highway through the mountains and minted
its own coins. Under the Romans it served in 167 B.C.
as a place of detention for the Illyrian king Gentius;
after the social war it was inscribed in the tribus Clustumina. But the running of the Via Flaminia in 223 B.C.
several miles E of Iguvium had sealed its fate, and its
decline through Imperial times was steady.
The theater, SW of the city, was always known;
systematic excavations and drawings of it were made as
early as 1789, and it is maintained as a monument. Its
date is disputed, but the size, the sophisticated plan, and
the rustication of the exterior suggest that it is not earlier
than Claudius. Nearby is the core of a large tomb, a
cylindrical base surmounted by an hourglass-shaped
story, perhaps representing a giant mill.
More famous are the Tabulae Iguvinae, seven bronze
tablets of three sizes found in 1444 near the theater. The
two largest and part of one smaller one are inscribed in
the Roman alphabet, the remainder in an Umbrian
alphabet akin to Etruscan. They contain instructions for
ceremonies of the Atiedan Brothers, a college of priests,
with a wealth of information about topography and cults.
They and other antiquities are kept in Palazzo dei Consoli.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dioniso 7 (1939) 3-16 (P. Moschella)
PI; J. W. Poultney,
The Bronze Tables of Iguvium,
American Philological Association (1959)
I;
EAA 3
(1960) 1067-68 (U. Ciotti).
L. RICHARDSON, JR.
