in the Composition of Nowis and Adjectives. 79 



Should my theory be correct, and I firmly believe such to be the 

 case, the trifling particle vce, in conjunction with history and tra- 

 dition, may enable us to form a probable conjecture as to the pe- 

 riod of time during which the fires of Vesuvius hushed them- 

 selves in " grim repose." 



Vesica *, a purse, a bladder, literally a small sack, a " wee 

 sackie.'' As the vowel a in simple Latin words is changed into 

 i in composition, as manus, fades, caput, form eminus, superficies, 

 occiput, so the a of saccus became i in vesica. The absence of 

 the second c only proves the antiquity of the composition ; be- 

 cause, as Festus informs us, " the ancient Latins never doubled 

 a letter. It is to Ennius that the change of this custom is 

 ascribed ; for he being a Greek, followed the custom of his 

 countrymen, who, both in writing and speaking, doubled mutes, 

 semivowels, and liquids f ." Vesica (apparently because its origin 

 was unknown) seems to have escaped remodelling, when saccus 

 and its derivatives admitted the double mute. The difference 

 of termination between saccus and vesica is of no consequence, 

 as such is frequently the case even with the same noun, both in 

 Greek and Latin. The learned Varro uses vesica in its origi- 

 nal sense for sacellus (our satchel) or sacculus. " Such fish-ponds 

 of the nobility are more for prospect than profit," " magis ad ocu- 

 los pertinent quam vesicam," " and rather exhaust than fill the 

 owner's purse" (marsupium)^:. It is from such passages that the 



* Sasxxo;, saccus, said to be the most general of all names. The Anglo-Saxon 

 saec comes nearest in sound and form to the sica of vesica. The Greek 0-xxx.os ori- 

 ginally a hide or skin, took a secondary form, with one sigma, to denote an inflated 

 hide or bladder, Ao-xas. 



■f" " Nomen antiquae consuetudinis per unum c enunciari, non est mirum, quia 

 nulla tunc geminabatur literain scribendo; quam consuetudinem Ennius mutavisse 

 fertur utpote Graecus. Grasco more usus, quod illi aeque scribentes ac legentes du- 

 plicabant mutas semivocales et liquidas.'" — Festus, under Solitaurilia, p, 878. 



I " Illae autem piscinae nobilium magis ad oculos pertinent quam ad vesicam 



