A Report upon the Herculaneum Manuscripts

Besbion. Varro calls it Vesubius and Vesuius. Virgil and Suetonius call it Vesevus. Columella, Statius, Martial, Silius Italicus, and Valerius Flaccus spell it differently.

This list of various names is introduced here for the sole purpose of inferring, with some apparent authority, that as both the Greeks and Romans are so vague in expressing the name of Vesuvius, they had derived it from some Eastern language, from which the name Herculaneum is, therefore, with as much probability, derived. It may not be improper, perhaps, to add that the Greeks very commonly articulated a foreign aspirate with the letter B, and the Romans with V.

According to all historians, the Samnites were a nation both warlike and powerful. “In that year (412 of the city, 340 BC), against the Samnites, a nation powerful in resources and arms, [they used] known weapons.” A piece of marble, preserved in the Royal Museum of Portici, has an inscription in Samnitic characters.