The serpent played an important rôle in Asiatic and ancient Egyptian symbolism. This has been thought to be due partly to a belief that the sun’s path through the heavens formed a serpentine curve, and partly because lightning, or the fertilizing fire, sometimes flashes upon the earth in a snake-like zigzag.[125] The serpent was endowed with the attributes of divinity on account of its graceful and easy movements, the brightness of its eyes, the function of discarding its skin (a process which was regarded as emblematic of a renewal of its youth), and its instantaneous spring upon its prey.[126] The worship of serpents is of great antiquity, the earliest authentic accounts of the custom being found in Chaldean and Chinese astronomical works. It was nearly universal among the most ancient nations of the world, and this universality has been ascribed to the traditionary remembrance of the serpent in Eden,[127] and has given rise to the opinion of some writers that snake-worship may have been the primitive religion of the human race.[128] On the walls of houses in Pompeii are to be seen the figures of snakes, which are believed to have been intended as preservative symbols;[129] and we learn from Mr. C. G. Leland’s “Etruscan Roman Remains” that the peasants of the mountainous regions in northern Italy, known as the Romagna Toscana, have a custom of painting on the walls of their houses the figures of serpents with the heads and tails pointing upward. These are intended both as amulets to keep away witches, and as luck-bringers, and are therefore exact counterparts of the horse-shoe and the crescent as magical emblems. The more interlaced the snake’s coils, the more effective the amulet; the idea being that a witch is obliged to trace out and follow with her eye the interweaving convolutions, and that in attempting to do this she becomes bewildered, and is temporarily rendered incapable of doing harm. In ancient Roman works of art the serpent is sometimes portrayed as a protective symbol. In some bronze figures of Fortune unearthed at Herculaneum, serpents are represented either as encircling the arm of the goddess, or as entwined about her cornucopia, thus typifying, as it were, the idea of the intimate association of the snake with good luck. The Phœnicians rendered homage to serpents, and history shows that the Lithuanians, Sarmatians, or inhabitants of ancient Poland, and other nations of central Europe, treated these reptiles with superstitious respect. In Russia, also, domestic snakes were formerly carefully nurtured, for they were thought to bring good fortune to the members of a household.[130] The worship of serpents is still practiced in Persia, Tibet, Ceylon, and other Eastern lands. In western Africa, also, the serpent is a chief deity, and is appealed to by the natives in seasons of drought and pestilence.[131] A talisman having the form of a snake, and known as _la sirena_, is in use among the lower classes at Naples.