The mark of the beast, is its _name_, or the _number_ of its name. The ancients often used numbers to indicate names. “Among the Pagans, the Egyptian mystics spoke of Mercury, or Thouth, under the number 1218, because the Greek letters composing the name Thouth, when estimated according to their numerical value, together made up that number. By others, Jupiter was invoked under the mystical number 717; because the letters of Ἡ ΑΡΧΗ, _the beginning_, or _first origin_, which was a characteristic title of the supreme deity worshipped as Jupiter, made up that number: and Apollo under the number 608, as being that of ηυς, or υης, words expressing certain solar attributes. Again, the pseudo-Christian or semi-pagan Gnostics, from St. John’s time downwards, affixed to their gems and amulets, of which multitudes remain even to the present day, the mystic word σβρασαξ, or αβραξας, under the idea of some magic virtue attaching to its number 365, as being that of the days of the annual solar circle; and equal moreover with that of Μειθρας, or Mithras, the Magian name for the sun, whom they identified also with Christ. Once more, the Christian fathers themselves fell into the same fancies, and doctrine of mysteriousness in certain verbal numbers. For example, both Barnabas and Clement of Alexandria speak of the virtue of the number 318 as being that of ΙΗΤ the common abbreviation for Jesus crucified; and partly ascribe to its magical virtue the victory which Abraham gained with his 318 servants over the Canaanitish kings. Similarly Tertullian refers the victory of Gideon, with his 300 men, to the circumstance of that being the precise number of Τ, the sign of the cross. In the name of Adam, St. Cyprian discerned a mysterious numeral affinity to certain characteristics in the life and history of the second Adam, Jesus Christ. Irenæus notes the remarkable number 888 of the name Ιησους, Jesus. And in the pseudo-Sibylline verses, written by Christians about the end, probably, of the second century, and consequently not long after Irenæus, we find enigmas proposed of precisely the same characters as that in the text;—the number being given, and the name required.”—_Elliott’s Horæ Apoc._, vol. iii., pp. 204-6. The “number of the beast” is indicated in the text by the Greek letters “χξς” which were severally used to represent the numbers 600, 60 and 6, making 666. As the name of the beast is equivalent to this number, the letters in it will represent numbers which amount to six hundred threescore and six.