Living Vicariously next to the Vicus

As has been the case in other recent seasons the work crew was divided between those working inside the Fort at Vindolanda, and those working in the vicus, that being the civilian settlement outside the fort*.

The vicus is where the really amazing stuff tends to emerge.  With anaerobic preservation metal objects pop up without a speck of tarnish and wooden objects are still intact after nearly 2000 years.   

Sigh.  This year I was on the crew inside the fort.  Most of my digging pals were over in the vicus trench.  Envious?  Oh, just a bit but I have been down in the "good stuff" the last few seasons.

So I live vicariously through their anaerobic adventures.

Of course this got me musing.  Is there an etymological connection between vicus and vicarious?  

Close but no cigar.  Vicus is a latin word meaning "group of houses".  It survives to the modern era in the word vicinity.  

Vicarious -  meaning to live through the adventures of others - derives from vicis to "exchange or interchange".  The sort of Walter Mitty sense of it is first recorded only in 1929.  It also survives as the word "Vicar" through one of its secondary meanings, a place or position.  And if you are on an Etymology roll, vicis also gives us Vice President and "vice versa", each indicating a sort of replacement.

Vicus and Vicis.  Off by a single letter.

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* stuff being jostled around a good deal over the long occupation of Vindolanda some areas of Vicus are now underneath parts of the fort.  And vice versa.  It's complicated.