Ancient ingenuity for throwing its favourite gamma into other combinations, and thus bringing out pretty and graceful patterns to be wrought on all sorts of work for ecclesiastical use, did not stop here. In the Liber pontificalis of Anastasius we meet not unfrequently with accounts of vestments, etc. “de stauracin seu quadrapolis”; or “de quadrapolo”; or “de octapolo.” The author here evidently means to imply a distinction between a something amounting to four, and to eight, in or upon these textiles. It cannot be to say that one fabric was woven with four, the other with eight threads; had that been so meant, the fact would probably then have been explained by a word constructed like “examitus,” p. 24. As the contrast is not in the texture it must be in the pattern of the stuffs; that is, in the number of the crosses: and we further see why “stauracin” and “de quadrapolis” are interchangeable terms. At the end of Du Cange’s glossary is an engraving of a work of Greek art; plate IX. Here St. John Chrysostom stands between St. Nicholas and St. Basil. All three are arrayed in their liturgical garments, which being figured with crosses are of the textile called of old “stauracin;” but there is a marked difference in the way in which the crosses are inserted. The crosses are arranged upon the vestment of St. John thus; [Illustration] St. Nicholas and St. Basil have chasubles which are not only worked all over with crosses made with gammas, but are surrounded with other gammas joined so as to edge in the crosses, thus; [Illustration] As four gammas only are necessary to form all the crosses upon St. John’s vestment, we there see the textile called “stauracin de quadruplo,” or the stuff figured with a cross of four (gammas); while as eight of these letters are required for the pattern on the others, we have in them an example of the “stauracin de octapolo,” or “octapulo,” a fabric with a pattern composed of eight gammas. A far more ancient and universal shape fashioned out of the repetition of the same letter Γ, is that known as _Gammadion_; or, as commonly called at one time in England, the _Filfot_. Several pieces in the South Kensington collection exhibit on them some modification of it: for example, nos. 1261, 1325, 7052, 829A, 8305, 8635, and 8652. Its figure is made out of the usual four gammas, so that they should fall together thus; [Illustration]