"The subject of the Good Shepherd, I am sorry to add, is not of Roman but Greek origin, and was adapted from a statue of Mercury carrying a goat, at Tanagra, mentioned by Pausanias. The Christian composition approximates to its original more nearly in the few instances where Our Saviour is represented carrying a goat, emblematical of the scapegoat of the wilderness. Singularly enough, though of Greek parentage, and recommended to the Byzantines by Constantine, who erected a statue of the Good Shepherd in the forum of Constantinople, the subject did not become popular among them; they seem, at least, to have tacitly abandoned it to Rome."--_Lord Lindsay's Christian Art._ "The Good Shepherd seems to have been quite the favourite subject. We cannot go through any part of the Catacombs, or turn over any collection of ancient Christian monuments, without coming across it again and again. We know from Tertullian that it was often designed upon chalices. We find it ourselves painted in fresco upon the roofs and walls of the sepulchral chambers; rudely scratched upon gravestones, or more carefully sculptured on sarcophagi; traced in gold upon glass, moulded on lamps, engraved on rings; and, in a word, represented on every species of Christian monument that has come down to us. Of course, amid such a multitude of examples, there is considerable variety of treatment. We cannot, however, appreciate the suggestion of Kügler, that this frequent repetition of the subject is probably to be attributed to the capabilities which it possessed in an artistic point of view. Rather, it was selected because it expressed the whole sum and substance of the Christian dispensation. In the language even of the Old Testament, the action of Divine Providence upon the world is frequently expressed by images and allegories borrowed from pastoral life; God is the Shepherd, and men are His sheep. But in a still more special way our Divine Redeemer offers Himself to our regards as the Good Shepherd. He came down from His eternal throne into this wilderness of the world to seek the lost sheep of the whole human race, and having brought them together into one fold on earth, thence to transport them into the ever-verdant pastures of Paradise."--_Roma Sotterranea._ Other biblical subjects are:--from the _Old Testament_ (those of Noah, Moses, Daniel, and Jonah being the only ones at all common)-- 1. The Fall. Adam and Eve on either side of the Tree of Knowledge, round which the serpent is coiled. Sometimes, instead of this, "Our Saviour (as the representative of the Deity) stands between them, condemning them, and offering a lamb to Eve and a sheaf of corn to Adam, to signify the doom of themselves and their posterity to delve and to spin through all future ages."