=Vortigern’s Tower=, like Penelopê’s web, is a work ever beginning, and never ending. Vortigern was told by his magicians to build a strong tower for his own security; so he commanded his workmen to build one on Mount Erir, but whatever they built one day, was wholly swallowed up by the earth during the night.--Geoffrey, _British History_, vi. 17 (1142). =Vos non Vobis.= The tale is that Virgil wrote an epigram on Augustus Cæsar, which so much pleased the emperor that he desired to know who was the author. As Virgil did not claim the lines, one Bathyllus declared they were his. This displeased Virgil, and he wrote these four words, _Sic vos non vobis_ ... four times as the commencement of four lines, and Bathyllus was requested to finish them. This he could not do, but Virgil completed the lines thus: Sic vos non vobis nidificatis aves; Sic vos non vobis villera fertis oves; Sic vos non vobis mellificatis apes; Sic vos non vobis fertis aratra boves. Not for yourselves your nests ye song-birds build; Not for yourselves ye sheep your fleeces bear; Not for yourselves your hives ye bees have filled; Not for yourselves ye oxen draw the share. =Vox et præterea Nihil.= A Spartan, pulling a nightingale, and finding only a very small body, exclaimed, φωνὰ τύ τις ἐσσι, καὶ οὐδὲν ἄλλο (“Voice art thou, and nothing more”).--Plutarch, _Apophthegmata Laconica_. =Vox= (_Valentine_), enterprising ventriloquist, who figures in the novel called by his name.--Henry Cochton (1840). =Vran= (_Bendigeid_, _i.e._, “Blessed”), king of Britain, and father of Caradawc (_Caractacus_). He was called “Blessed,” because he introduced Christianity into this island. Vran had shared the captivity of his son, and had learned the Christian faith during his seven years’ detention in Rome. Vran or Bran the Blessed, son of Llyr, first brought the faith of Christ to the nation of the Cymry, from Rome, where he was seven years a hostage for his son, Caradawc, whom the Romans made prisoner, through craft and the treachery of Aregwedd Fôeddawg [_Cartismandua_] _Welsh Triads_, xxxv. =Vran’s Caldron= restored to life whoever was put therein, but the revivified never recovered speech. (See MEDEA’S KETTLE.) “I will give thee,” said Bendigeid Vran, “a caldron, the property of which is that if one of thy men be slain to-day, and be cast therein to-morrow, he will be as well as he was at the best, except that he will not regain his speech.”--_The Mabinogion_ (“Branwen,” etc., twelfth century). =Vrience= (_King_), one of the knights of the Round Table. He married Morgan le Fay, half-sister of King Arthur.--Sir T. Malory, _History of Prince Arthur_ (1470). =Vulcan= was the lawful offspring of Jupiter and Juno, but the former, upon beholding his homely son, kicked him out of heaven.