78 Rev. Mr Wirx1aMs on the Force of the prefix Ve or Ve 
down upon and almost overshadowed their settlements of Nea- 
polis, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiz. The Greeks were far 
more accurate observers of nature than the Romans. Pxryy the 
elder, though a dweller in the immediate neighbourhood of Ve- 
suvius, and destined to perish under its renewed activity, makes 
no further mention of this mountain in his great work, than to 
say that it looks down upon these cities, and that it was celebrated 
for a certain grape. But Srrazo, although only a passing tra- 
veller, has given us a graphic description of its summit, “ as being 
a barren spot, surrounded on all sides by a most fertile district, 
having a cinderous appearance, and caverns burnt out in the rocks, 
so that it might be safely inferred that the place had formerly 
been an active voleano, and contained fiery craters.” For such 
a summit, what could have been a happier epithet than Ve-sbius, 
parum extinctus, which must have particularly suited its state on 
the first arrival of the Greeks, ten centuries before the famous 
eruption in A.D. 79? As to the word itself, we find it written 
Vesevus, Vesuvius, Vesvius, and Vesbius ; Greek, Oveccousor ogos, 
and BeoGios. Lucretius seems to have softened the pronuncia- 
tion into Vesevus, and Virer followed him. But it is to be re- 
marked, that all the poets who call it Vesbius or Vesvius, wrote 
after the eruption, when public attention had been called to it, 
and when its local name was likely to be better ascertained. 
Nor would I willingly believe, that servile imitators of Vrrert, 
like Srxrus Ivaticus * and Srarius +, would have ventured on a 
new form of a word already fixed by the authority of the two 
great national poets, had it not been the local and original name. 
* < Sic ubi vi cxeca tandem devictus ad astra 
Evomuit pastos per seecula Vesbius ignes.” 
Lib. xvii. ver. 597. 
GLa Coal ane icteaaine teats tiem oatni sole Chalcidis 
Littoribus fractas ubi Vesbius erigit iras.” 
Silo. lib. iv. carm. 4. ver. 79. 
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