found it chiselled upon the stone when the temple of Serapis was destroyed, in 391. In this temple Serapis himself was represented of superhuman size, with arms outstretched in the form of a cross, as though embracing the universe. In Rome the Vestal virgins wore the cross upon a ribbon round the neck. Indeed, it even served as an ornament upon the weapons of the Roman legions and upon the standards of the cavalry long before Constantine, by his well-known "vision," gave occasion for its being expressly introduced under the form of the so-called "Monogram of Christ" into the army as a military sign. [271] But in the North also we find the cross, not only in the shape of the hooked-cross and the three-armed cross (Triskele), but also in the form of Thor's hammer, upon runic, stones, weapons, utensils, ornaments, amulets, &c. And when the heathens of the North, as Snorre informs us, marked themselves in the hour of death with a spear, they scratched upon their bodies one of the sacred signs that has been mentioned, in doing which they dedicated themselves to God. [272] That here we have to do with a sun symbol is easily recognised wherever the simple, equally-armed cross appears duplicated with an oblique cross having the same point of intersection with it, [eight ray star symbol], or where it has the shape of a perpendicular which is cut symmetrically by two other lines crossing one another, [six ray star symbol]. And as a matter of fact this symbol of a sun shedding its rays is found upon numberless coins and illustrations, in which it is obvious that a reference to the sun is intended--e.g., upon the coins of the Egyptian Ptolemies, of the city Gods of Rome, of Augustus and the Flavian Cæsars. Here the Sun sign appears to have been adopted as a consequence of the fusing of the Sun Cult of later antiquity with the cult of the Emperor. Much more frequent, however, is the simple Tau, sometimes, indeed, in a shape with equal limbs (Greek cross), +, sometimes with the upright below lengthened (Latin cross), sometimes upright, sometimes oblique (St. Andrew's cross), ×, sometimes, again, like the Greek letter Tau, T, sometimes in the shape of the so-called mirror of Venus, [Venus symbol], in which the ring plainly refers to the sun, sometimes in that of the Svastika, or hooked cross, [swastika], sometimes with, sometimes without a circle, and so on. A form made up of the oblique and the ring cross of the Egyptians (so-called Key of the Nile) is the cross known under the description of the "Monogram of Christ." According to the legend it was first employed by Constantine on account of his "vision"; and ecclesiastical writers, especially on the Catholic side, try even to-day to support this view, in spite of all facts. For this form of the cross also is clearly of pre-Christian origin, and had its prototype in the ancient Bactrian Labarum cross, as is found, for example, upon the coins of the Bactrian king Hippostratos (about