478 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



pars mundi mense vertente vadens transit ; 240, 2 : itaque quemadmodum 

 sol per siderum spatia vadens dilatat contrahitque dies et horas ; 225, 4 : 

 cum (sc. luna) praeteriens vadat ad orientis caeli partes. In these three 

 passages we have no common ' going,' but the grand movement of 

 heavenly bodies, and it is worth observing that Cicero never uses the 

 simple verb eo of movements of the sun, moon, or stars in his orations or 

 philosophical works. He has elabor, vagor, erro, and the compounds 

 accedo, antecedo, discedo, recedo, anteverto, peragro, subsequor, abeo, adeo, 

 and obeo 15 (see Merguet's Lexicons s. vv. sol, luna, stella). The other 

 two passages in which Vitruvius uses the simple verb vado are both in 

 prefaces, in which, as is well known, our author often aims at a higher 

 style than in the body of his work. The first is 132, 8 : at qui non doc- 

 trinarum sed felicitatis praesidiis putartt se esse vallatum, labidis itiner- 

 ibus vadentem non stabili sed injirma conjlictari vita. Here the picture 

 of the foolish man who depends on luck rather than on learning, ' mov- 

 ing in slippery paths,' is apj:>ropriately colored by the use of vadentem. 

 The second is 215, 25, where in the famous anecdote about Archimedes 

 it is said : exsiluit g audio motus de solio et nudus vadens domum versus 

 signijicabat clara voce invenisse quod quaereret. Here the use of vado 

 is like that which is found in Cicero's letters as cited above (p. 477). It 

 appears, therefore, that there is nothing in Vitruvius's use of the simple 

 verb which is at variance with classical examples. On the contrary, 

 Ussing would have been more fortunate had he criticised the single occur- 

 rence in Vitruvius of the simple verb eo, 220, 1 1 : luna . . . caeli cir- 

 cumitionem percurrens ex quo signo coeperit ire ad id signum revertendo 

 perjicit lunarem mensem ; for we have seen that it is not Ciceronian to 

 employ this simple verb of the movements of heavenly bodies. But how 

 about the Vitruvian use of the compounds of these verbs ? Here the 

 statistics tell the opposite tale, for he has compounds of eo (ad-, ex-, in-, 

 prod-, red-, sub-, intro-) fifty-six times and compounds of vado only twice, 

 in each case with per- (221, 24 : Saturni (sc. stella) . . . pervadens 

 per signi spatium ; 226, 21 : sol signa pervadens). Both of these are 

 descriptive of the movements of heavenly bodies, and the compound 

 pervado is Ciceronian (e.g. V. 3, 66 ; W. D. 2, 145). To conclude: 

 Vitruvius's use of vado and -vado, six times in the present participle 

 and once in the form vadat, is shown by an examination of the contexts 

 to be no proof of late authorship. 



15 That Vitruvius also uses compounds of eo may be seen, for example, from 

 two of the passages just cited. 



