84 Rev. Mr Williams on the Force of the prefix Ve or Va 



houses left a vacant space before the entrance, between the door 

 and the street. There all who came to pay their morning re- 

 spects to the owner used to remain until they were admitted ; so 

 that they neither stood in the street, nor were yet within the 

 house # ." Had vestibulum been applied only to such mansions, 

 thus magnificently described by Virgil, Georgic second, 



" Si non ingentem foribus domus alta superbis 

 Mane salutantum totis vomit aedibus undam, 

 Nee varios inhiant pulchra testudine postes ;" 



the opinion of Sulpicius would have had some verisimilitude. 

 But we know, on the contrary, that every house had its vestibulum. 

 According to Vitruvius, " men of small fortunes need not have 

 magnificent vestibules, because they have to pay their morning 

 respects to others f ;" but small ones of course they must have 

 had. Nay, further, the very small spot of ground by which ac- 

 cess from a public road to a sepulchre was secured, was called 

 vestibulum. Cicero informs us, that, by a law of the Twelve 

 Tables, the right of way to a tomb, " forum id est vestibulum 

 sepulchri," could not be lost by prescription \. Hence, it is evi- 

 dent, that the meaning of the vce in vestibulum differs not from 

 that attributed to it in the words already examined, and that 

 vestibulum originally meant the small space intervening between 

 the street and the entrance into the house. 



Vestigium, the track, the footstep, literally the small prick 



* " Qui domos igitur amplas antiquitus faciebant, locum ante januam vacuum 

 relinquebant, qui inter fores domus et viam medius esset. In eo loco qui dominum 

 ejus domus salutatum venerant, priusquam admitterentur consistebant, et neque in 

 via stabant neque intra aedes erant. 1 ' — Lib. xi. cap. 5. 



-f- " His, qui communi sunt fortuna, non necessaria magnifica vestibula, quod hi 

 aliis officia praestant ambiundo. 1 ' — Lib. vi. cap. 8. 



J De Legibus, lib. ii. sect. 24. 



