290 ON THE ICTIS OF DIODORUS SICULUS. 
there is no mention of this island. But that 
writer has plainly indicated, by his mode of spell- 
ing other proper names beginning with a V, that 
he was not insensible to the force of this letter ; 
and that, if he had been led to make mention of 
the Isle of Wight, he would as soon have thought 
of calling it Jctis, as we should of leaving out the 
initial W, and calling it the Isle of Jght. The 
same remark will apply to Diodorus, who calls the 
Volsct, a people of Latium, “ovdacxa;* and Vesuvius, 
the celebrated volcanic mountain in Campania, 
Odsrob6i0s.f It is contrary to all analogy, indeed, 
to suppose that a proper name, commencing with 
an I in Greek, should be the representative of 
one commencing with a V in Latin;f{ and for 
poses this to be an error of transcription for Od#xrc, because 
the ancient Latin interpreter has rendered it by Vectis. Vide 
Antonini Augusti [tinerariwm ; p. 509. 
* Vol. I. p. 652; Ed. Wesseling. 
+ Vol. I. p. 267. In the printed text it is Odexovc10s, which 
is a manifest error for OvscotGios; and so it is regarded by 
Diodorus’s learned editor. 
{ There are instances, in which digammated words, whose 
initial letter is I, on passing into the Latin, have retained the 
digamma, which is commonly expressed by the letter V, (as 
vis from i‘;,) but Greek authors of the age of Diodorus, when 
writing a Latin word in Greek characters, pay as much regard 
to the V as any other letter, and usually express it in the way 
pointed out above. 
