I have consulted a considerable number of books of Emblems published before the _Pericles_ was written, but have not discovered either the device or “the word” exactly in the form given in the play. There is a near approach to the device in Reusner’s _Emblems_, printed at Francfort in 1581 (Emb. 7, lib. i. p. 9). A man is represented stretching forth his hand towards the meridian sun, and the device is surmounted by the motto, _Sol animi virtus_,—“Virtue the sun of the soul.” The elegiac verses which follow carry out the thought with considerable clearness,— _“Sol, oculus cœli, radijs illuminat orbem: Et Phœbe noctem disjicit alba nigram. Sol animi virtus sensus illuminat ægros: Et tenebras mentis discutit alma fides. Si menti virtus, virtuti præuia lucet Pura fides: nihil hoc clarius esse potest. Aurea virtutis species, fideiq., Philippe, Præradians, cœlo sic tibi monstrat iter. Scilicet hic vitæ Sol est, & Lucifer vnus: Hæc Phœbe, noctem quæ fugat igne suo. Quæ dum mente vides correcta lumina; mundi Impauidus tenebras despicis, atq. metus. Sol magno Phœbeq. micent, & Lucifer orbi: Dum tibi sic virtus luceat, atq. fides.”_[93] Among these lines is one to illustrate the first knight’s motto; “_Scilicet hic vitæ Sol est, & Lucifer vnus_,” “_This in truth is the Sun of life, and the one Light-bringer._” But Plautus, the celebrated comic poet of Rome, gives in his _Asinaria_, 3. 3. 24, almost the very words of the Spartan knight: _Certe tu vita es mihi_,—“Of a truth thou art life to me.” The introduction of an Ethiop was not unusual with Shakespeare. In the _Two Gentlemen of Verona_ (act. ii. sc. 6. l. 25, vol. i. p. 112), Proteus avers,— “And Silvia,—witness Heaven that made her fair!— Shows Julia but a swarthy Ethiope;” and in _Love’s Labour’s Lost_ (act. iv. sc. 3, l. 111, vol. ii. p. 144), Dumain reads these verses,— “Do not call it sin in me, That I am forsworn for thee; Thou for whom Jove would swear Juno but an Ethiope were.” A genius so versatile as that of Shakespeare, and capable of creating almost a whole world of imagination out of a single hint, might very easily accommodate to his own idea Reusner’s suggestive motto, and make it yield the light of love to the lover rather than to the reverend sage. Failing in identifying the exact source of the “black Ethiope reaching at the sun,” we may then not unreasonably suppose that Shakespeare himself formed the device, and fitted the Latin to it.