390 ERBATA RECKPTA. 



to speak, for Groma or Gruma, tlie military surveyor's staff set up to 

 mark the centre of a proposed camp. — Postumus, a superlative of 

 posterus, was sometimes, as in English, converted into posihiimus, as 

 though it expressed relation to one defunct and buried in the earth ; 

 while, in fact, it is simply ' last ; ' indicating, when applied to off- 

 spring, that the child is the latest born ; including, especially, the 

 case of an infant born after its father's death, or after he had made 

 his will. — In one particular sense, providentia acquired the form pro- 

 mncia, witb the notion included, that a province was an addition to 

 an empire, by conquest. — So duellum, the archaic form of helium; as 

 duis for Us, was interpreted, in the time of Festus, 3rd century, A. 

 D., as if duo were contained in it ; and, as if it expressed, simply, 

 what the English word duel does. — And, opus Musivum or opus 

 Museum, "work inspired by the Muses," i. e., displaying taste and 

 beauty, has come down to our time in the Italian musaico, and the 

 French Mosdique. In this last term, we see a blending of ideas, 

 similar to that which, at a later period, confounded occasionally sah- 

 aoth with sabhath. — The Fasti of Ovid would furnish a multitude of 

 ill-founded Latin vernacularisms were it expedient to cite more than 

 those that are here referred to. 



The infamous Emperor Elagabalus, more correctly Avitus Bassianus, 

 or (to employ the respectable name so horribly abused by him) Mar- 

 cus Aurelius Antoninus, figures in Greek writers (e. g. Heliodorus), 

 as Heliogabalus, wherein the Helio is a vernacular effort to express 

 the whole sense of Elagabalus, a name of the sun-god worshipped at 

 Emesa; a name, however, having no reference to Helios, but to JElah- 

 Gebal, an aerolite'preserved and venerated as a fetiche in a temple of 

 that city. — The Hebrew Kishon, literally "bent," the "ancient river" 

 now known as the Nahr Mukutta, becomes in manuscripts by 

 Greek hands the river Kisson, the Ivy-river. In the same manu- 

 scripts the brook Kidron, literally "the dark," is the brook Cedron^ 

 the brook of Cedars. In a similar manner, Simon of Cana, Simon 

 Zelotes, figures sometimes as Simon the Canaanite, Canaanite being 

 the more familiar term. — Bozra, the ancient site of Carthage signified 

 in Phoenician, town. The Greeks chose to understand the word in 

 their own way, and to call it Byrsa. Then followed a slory to ac- 

 count for the name. One of the summits of the Capitoline Hill in 

 Home is covered at this day with the buildings of a Church and mon- 

 astery bearing the title of the Ara Celi. We have here an ancient 



