I am unable to recognise either a jackal or a wild ass in the figure in dispute, which seems in greater likelihood to represent a not ill-executed horse's head. Nor seemingly is the creature crucified, but on the contrary it is supporting the letter "T," or Tau, an emblem which was so peculiarly sacred among the Druids that they even topped and trained their sacred oak until it had acquired this holy form.[407] The Tau was the sign mentioned by Ezekiel as being branded upon the foreheads of the Elect, and this "curious scratch" of poor Alexamenos attributed to the very early part of the third century was not, in my humble opinion, the work of some illiterate slave or soldier attached to the palace of the Cæsars, ridiculing the religion of a companion, but more probably the pious work of a Gnostic lover of philosophy: that the Roman church was honeycombed with Gnostic heresies is well known. The word _philosophy_ is _philo sophy_ or the love of wisdom, but _sophi_, or wisdom, is radically _ophi_, or _opi_, _i.e._, the Phoenician _hipha_, Greek _hippa_, a mare: the name Philip is always understood as _phil ip_ or "love of the horse," and the _hobby_ horse of British festivals was almost certainly the _hippa_ or the _hippo_. [Illustration: FIG. 234.--Macedonian. From _English Coins and Tokens_ (Jewitt & Head).] Of the 486 varieties of British coins illustrated by Sir John Evans no less than 360 represent a horse in one form or another, whence it is obvious that the hobby horse was once a national emblem of the highest import. In the opinion of this foremost authority all Gaulish and all British coins are contemptible copies of a wondrous Macedonian stater, which circulated at Marseilles, whence the design permeated Gaul and Britain in the form of rude and clownish imitations: this supposed model, the very mark and acme of all other craftsmen, is here illustrated, and the reader can form his own opinion upon its artistic merits. "It appears to me," says Sir John Evans, "that in most cases the adjuncts found upon the numerous degraded imitations of this type are merely the result of the engraver's laziness or incompetence, where they are not attributable to his ignorance of what the objects he was copying were originally designed to represent. And although I am willing to recognise a mythological and national element in this adaptation of the Macedonian stater which forms the prototype of the greater part of the ancient British series, it is but rarely that this element can be traced with certainty upon its numerous subsequent modifications."[408]