The probability of this is more or less apparent from what we are told concerning the part he played in connection with what, thanks, as we are about to see, to him, became our recognised symbol. Our knowledge of the part played by Constantine in connection with the symbol of the cross, except so far as we can gather it from a study of ancient coins and other relics, unfortunately comes to us solely through Christian sources. And the first that famous bishop and ecclesiastical historian Eusebius of Caesarea, to whom we owe so large a proportion of our real or supposed knowledge of the early days of Christianity, tells us about Constantine and the cross, is that in the year A.C. 312--a quarter of a century before his admission into the Christian Church--Constantine and the Gaulish soldiers he was leading saw at noon _over the Sun_ a cross of Light in the heavens, bearing upon it or having attached to it the inscription EN TOYT{omega} NIKA, _By this conquer_. The words of the Bishop, who is reporting what he states the Emperor in question to have told him personally, are:-- "He said that at mid-day when the sun was beginning to decline he saw with his own eyes the trophy of a cross of light in the heavens, above the Sun, bearing the inscription EN TOYT{omega} NIKA; he himself, and his whole army also, being struck with amazement at this sight."[33] Though this marvellous cross, declared by Christian writers of that century to have been the so-called Monogram of Christ {image "monogram1.gif"} or {image "monogram3.gif"} or {image "monogram2.gif"} or {image "monogram4.gif"}, appeared to an army of Sun-God worshippers, Constantine himself--as can be seen from his coins--remaining one for many years afterwards if not till his death, it is put before us as a Christian cross. It is also noteworthy that no material representation of a cross of any description was ever held aloft by adherents of the Christian Church, until after Constantine is said to have had this more or less solar cross so represented as the standard of his Gaulish army. Mention should therefore be made of the fact that, upon the coins he struck, the symbol {image "monogram1.gif"} is perhaps the one which occurs the most frequently upon representations of the famous _Labarum_ or Military Standard of Constantine; but that the symbol {image "monogram1.gif"}, the {image "monogram3.gif"} and {image "monogram4.gif"} without the circle, and the {image "solarwheel1.gif"} and {image "asterisk.gif"}, are also to be seen.