On the Bishops of Gubbio

custom of the times—which holds supreme power over languages and the speech of men—dictated. If anyone were to consult the old books of the Latins and Greeks, both those in manuscript and those in print, in which this city is named, they would hardly recognize its name, so corrupt and deformed will they find it. For who, reading what is in most copies of Caesar, Tully (a), Livy (b), Silius (c), Strabo (d), and Ptolemy (e)—such as Sisinguium, Tignium, Igiturvium, Inginum, Itorum, and Isuvium or Isvium—would take them for Iguvio unless light shone from elsewhere? And indeed, there have been even very learned writers—among whom I marvel at Sigonius (f)—who, when listing the ancient peoples of Umbria, omitted the Iguvini, who should have been numbered among the first. The cause of this error was that they did not recognize the ancient name of the city of Iguvina, wretchedly defiled as it was in ancient books. There were also those who, for this same reason, openly denied that this city was known to Strabo and Ptolemy, specifically because they were not able to discern its name, which was corrupted in their books (g). Moreover, from the fact that there is no mention of the city of Eugubium by these princes of geography, it would have been easy to suspect its insignificance. But this error was checked not long ago by the learned man Marcellus Franciarinus, a noble jurist of Eugubium, who published a dissertation demonstrating that Strabo's Itorum and Ptolemy's Isuvium are none other than our Iguvium or, as we now love to say, Eugubium (h).

(a) See Cluver. loc. cit. (b) Livy, Dec. V, l. V, c. XXXVI: "The Spoletans refusing custody, the kings were led to Igiturvium." (c) Silius Italicus, l. VIII: "Narnia, and Inginum, once hostile with damp mists." (d) Cluverius says that Strabo, among other things that were to the left of the Via Flaminia on this side of the Apennines, listed these towns: Ameria, Tuder, Hispellum, and Itorum. But regarding this last town, Cluverius continues, one might justly ask: since Strabo lists it among the illustrious and most memorable cities, how is it that no mention of it exists in any other author? But since this was near the very crossing of the Apennine mountain, as Strabo says, namely where the Via Flaminia was crossed, Cluverius rightly infers that there is no other place on the left side of the road as near as Iguvium. And he rightly considers this word in Strabo to have been corrupted by copyists into Itorum. (e) In Ptolemy's tables, it is Isuvium. But learned men had understood for several centuries that Ptolemy's Isuvium is the same as Iguvium, as is evident from Francesco Berlinghieri, who dedicated his geography, explained in Italian verses, to Federico, Duke of Urbino, after the middle of the 15th century.