No. II. — Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabice. 117 



upon the ruins of that destroyed by Sylla. He founds it upon 

 a passage of Symonachus, * bearing a date of about 380 years 

 after our aera, which describes Stabiae as still in existence ; and 

 another of the " Historia Miscellanea,^'' -f under Justinian, 150 

 years later, in which occurs the remarkable expression, " villa, 

 quae Stabii dicitur.'' It is sufficiently remarkable that the very 

 same word " villa" should have been employed by this late 

 writer as by Pliny in reference to Stabiae, which would certain- 

 ly rather incline me to the opinion I have already stated, that it 

 might be put for a village even in the Augustan age, although 

 Ciuverius \ pronounces it a modern barbarism. At all events, 

 without entering into a philological dispute, the reading of 

 " villas" in Pliny may supply us with the idea of a string of 

 detached houses forming a village; which from Swinburne, 

 who saw the excavation going on, we learn to be much the 

 true appearance. § With regard to the existence of Stabiae in 

 late times, the authorities are certainly somewhat perplexing. 

 Yet we cannot, for the reasons already alluded to, relinquish 

 the belief in the fate of Stabiae under the eruption of 79- It 

 only remains, therefore, to suppose, that, from the great dis- 

 tance of the mountain,- and the comparatively slight desolation 

 which the country round had experienced, a new village had 

 speedily risen on the site of the former one. 



It is now time to notice briefly the phenomenon by which 

 the cities of Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabia? were de- 

 stroyed. The event was one sufficiently novel and surprising 

 to ensure us some account of it from an age even less scientific 

 than that of Titus ; yet in some of the facts connected with it, 

 especially regarding the fate of the Campanian towns, we are 

 left in remarkable uncertainty. 



The letters of Pliny which relate the death of his uncle in 

 the eruption of a. d. 79, are addressed to his friend the histo- 

 rian Tacitus, from whom we might have expected some cir- 

 cumstantial details of the event ; but unfortunately the part of 

 his history to which it belongs has been lost. Our principal 



• Italia Antiqua. vi. 17. I Lib. xvi. 



:|: " Vocabulo villw utitur more sui aevi pro vico ; ut hodieque fit per 

 omnera Europam ab iis qui Latino barbare loquuiitur aut scribunt." 

 § Travels, vol. i. p. 128. 



