The Romans seldom had signs that hung free, such as the Cimbric shield described above. Generally their signs were paintings or reliefs on a wall. There were in the shops of Pompeii depressions in the wall made especially to receive these signs. So, too, the so-called “dealbator” whitewashed a place on the wall for the election bulletins. Sometimes the painter used wood or glass as the ground for his sign. We find all the Roman animal signs--storks, bears, dragons, as well as the eagle, the cock, and the elephant--in the later Christian ages. It is not impossible that the eagle signs of later days are the direct descendants of the old Roman eagle; and they probably existed in most of the old towns founded by the Romans--Mayence, Speyer, Worms, Basel, Constance. The names that have come down to us are chiefly of taverns in the African colonies. Here we find, curiously enough, the wheel (“ad rotam”), the symbol of St. Catherine, which we shall meet later in Christian lands; for example, in a picturesque sign in the old town of Ravensburg in Württemberg. [Illustration: Zumwilden Mann Eßlingen] In Spain we find the Moor (“ad Maurum”) who kept his popularity for centuries. In Sardinia, Hercules, the pattern of the later hero with the “big stick,” as he appears in the German sign at Esslingen. Some of the inns had names of heathen divinities, like Diana, or Mercury, the god of commerce, or Apollo, whose emblem the sun shed its inviting rays from so many a tavern portal in fair and foul weather alike. A tavern in Lyons was named “Ad Mercurium et Apollinem”: “Mercurius hic lucrum permittit, Apollo salutem” (“Here Mercury dispenses prosperity, and Apollo health”). It is possible that these taverns had gods as signs, just as in the Middle Ages the streets abounded in images of the Madonna and saints, which invited the traveler to turn in for profit or pleasure. Tertullian tells us that there was not a public bath or tavern without its image of a god: “balnea et stabula sine idolo non sunt.” After the victory of Christianity the images of the gods were cheap: tavern-keepers could buy them for a few obols. We can little doubt that among this “rubbish” was many a precious work of art which the museums of to-day would be proud to own. It would be hard to say whether an unbroken tradition connects the signs of the Middle Ages with those of like name in classical antiquity. Many a sign may have been invented anew. But that we have learned much directly from the old Romans in the field of hospitality is proved by a curious fact. The Bavarian Knödel, which every true Bajuware claims as an indigenous, national institution, are prepared to-day exactly like the old Roman “globuli,” after the recipes of Columella and Varro. Such, at least, is the assurance of Herr von Liebenau in his interesting book on Swiss hospitality.