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For how otherwise came axilla to be changed into ala, but by the omission of an unweildy consonant, which the elegant pronunciation of our language has likewise banished from the words maxillae, taxillae, vexillum, and paxillum?
On the hills I saw a very handsome Bauhinia, a tree about twenty feet high, with spreading branches covered with axillary fascicles of red flowers, long broad flat legumes, pinnate leaves, leaflets oval, about one inch long; an Erythrina, with fine racemes of orange-coloured flowers, with long narrow keel, and broad vexillum, leaves palmate, and three to five lunate leaflets, long, round, painted legumes, red seeds; also a rose-coloured Brachychiton, with rather small flowers, a deciduous tree of stunted habit, about twenty feet high.
"Look!" she called, and, following her finger, he gazed eagerly ahead. A clump of horsemen, heavy armed with helmet and corselet, crowned the knoll of rising ground over which the road led, and, above them, fluttering in the breeze, he saw the square vexillum of the cavalry of the legion. He was among them now, lifting Marcia from her horse and dimly conscious of many words being spoken around.
To the slaves waving their torches he waved his hand; then he turned to the waiting ship, beautiful with ordered ranks and crested helms, and shields and javelins. As he stepped upon the bridge, the trumpets sounded, and over the aplustre rose the vexillum purpureum, or pennant of a commander of a fleet.
There being no leaves to this plant, it is hard to say what genus it properly belongs to. The flowers are very like to the Colutea Barbae Jovis folio flore coccineo Breynii; of the same scarlet colour, with a large deep purple spot in the vexillum, but much bigger, coming all from the same point after the manner of an umbel.
Vexillum we know, and vexillarius, but vexillarium goes beyond my Latin. However, it is an intelligible word, and those acquainted with the appearance of "regimental colours" in Old Rome perceive its fitness at a glance. The flat bloom seems to hang suspended from its centre, just as the vexillum figures in bas-relief on the Arch of Antoninus, for example.
For how was it that Axilla was made Ala, except by the flight of the larger letter? and so the elegant usage of Latin conversation takes this letter x out of maxilla, and taxilla, and vexillum, and paxillum. They also joined words by uniting them at their pleasure; so as to say sodes for si audes, sis for si vis. And in this word capsis there are no less than three words.
Plutarch means the Vexillum. Gall. ii. 20; Bell. Hispan. c. 28, Bell. The error may be owing to the copyists. Cn. His history of the Civil Wars was comprised in seventeen books. In saying that Pompeius "let his horse go," I have used an expression that may be misunderstood.
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