There is a symbolism so natural, that, like certain implements peculiar to the stone age, it does not belong to any particular race, but constitutes a characteristic trait of mankind at a certain phase of its development. Of this class are representations of the sun by a disk or radiating face, of the moon by a crescent, of the air by birds, of water by fishes or a broken line, of thunder by an arrow or a club, etc. We ought, perhaps, to add a few more complicated analogies, as those which lead to symbolizing the different phases of human life by the growth of a tree, the generative forces of nature by phallic emblems, the divine triads by an equilateral triangle, or in general by any triple combination the members of which are equal, and the four principal directions of space by a cross. How many theories have been built upon the presence of the cross as an object of veneration among nearly all the peoples of the Old and New Worlds? Roman Catholic writers have justly protested, in recent years, against attributing a pagan origin to the cross of the Christians, because there were cruciform signs in the symbolism of religions anterior to Christianity. It is also right, by the same reason, to refuse to accept the attempts to seek for infiltrations of Christianity in foreign religions because they also possess the sign of redemption. * * * Nearly all peoples have represented the fire from the sky by an arm and, sometimes also, by a bird of strong and rapid flight. It was symbolized among the Chaldeans by a trident. Cylinders going back to the most ancient ages of Chaldean art exhibit a water jet gushing from a trident which is held by the god of the sky or of the storm. The Assyrian artist who first, on the bas-reliefs of Nimroud or Malthai, doubled the trident or transformed it into a trifid fascicle, docile to the refinements and elegancies of classic art, by that means secured for the ancient Mesopotamian symbol the advantage over all the other representations of thunder with which it could compete. The Greeks, like the other Indo-European nations, seem to have represented the storm-fire under the features of a bird of prey. When they received the Asiatic figure of the thunderbolt, they put it in the eagle’s claws and made of it the scepter of Zeus, explaining the combination, after their habit, by the story of the eagles bringing thunder to Zeus when he was preparing for the war against the Titans. Latin Italy transmitted the thunderbolt to Gaul, where, in the last centuries of paganism, it alternated on the Gallo-Roman monuments with the two-headed hammer.
The emblem writers, so designated, have furnished an immense body of literature, and apparently have considered such pictures as those of the Winter Counts in the present work and also all symbols to be included in their proper scope. The best summary on the subject is by Henry Greene (a), from which the following condensed extract is taken:
Of the changes through which a word may pass the word emblem presents one of the most remarkable instances. Its present signification, type, or allusive representation is of comparatively modern use, while its original meaning is obsolete. Among the Greeks an emblem meant something thrown in or inserted after the fashion of what we now call marquetry and mosaic work, or in the form of a detached ornament to be affixed to a pillar, a tablet, or a vase, and put off or on as there might be occasion.
Quintilian (lib. 2, cap. 4), in enumerating the arts of oratory used by the pleaders of his day, describes some of them as in the habit of preparing and committing to memory certain highly finished clauses, to be inserted (as occasion might arise) like emblems in the body of their orations. Such was the meaning of the term in the classical ages of Greece and Rome; nor was its signification altered until some time after the revival of literature in the fifteenth century.
Thus, in their origin, emblems were the figures or ornaments fashioned by the tools of the artists, in metal or wood, independent of the vase, or the column, or the furniture they were intended to adorn; they might be affixed or detached at the promptings of the owner’s fancy. Then they were formed, as in mosaic, by placing side by side little blocks of colored stone, or tiles, or small sections of variegated wood. Raised or carved figures, however produced, came next to be considered as emblems; and afterwards any kind of figured ornament or device, whether carved or engraved or simply traced, on the walls and floors of houses or on vessels of wood, clay, stone, or metal.
By a very easy and natural step figures and ornaments of many kinds, when placed on smooth surfaces, were named emblems; and as these figures and ornaments were very often symbolical, i. e., signs or tokens of a thought, a sentiment, a saying, or an event, the term emblem was applied to any painting, drawing, or print that was representative of an action, of a quality of the mind, or of any peculiarity or attribute of character. Emblems in fact were and are a species of hieroglyphics, in which the figures or pictures, besides denoting the natural objects to which they bear resemblances, were employed to express properties of the mind, virtues and abstract ideas, and all the operations of the soul.
The following remarks of the same author (b) are presented in this connection, though they pass beyond the scope of either symbols or emblems into other divisions of pictography, as classified in the present work:
Coins and medals furnish most valuable examples of emblematical figures; indeed some of the emblem writers, as Sambucus, in 1564, were among the earliest to publish impressions or engravings of ancient Roman money, on which are frequently given very interesting representations of customs and symbolical acts. On Grecian coins we find, to use heraldic language, that the owl is the crest of Athens, a wolf’s head that of Argos, and a tortoise the badge of the Peloponnesus. The whole history of Louis XIV and that of his great adversary, William III, is represented in volumes containing the medals that were struck to commemorate the leading events of their reigns, and, though outrageously untrue to nature and reality by the adoption of Roman costumes and classic symbols, they serve as records of remarkable occurrences.
Heraldry throughout employs the language of emblems; it is the picture-history of families, of tribes, and of nations, of princes and emperors. Many a legend and many a strange fancy may be mixed up with it, and demand almost the credulity of simplest childhood in order to obtain our credence; yet in the literature of chivalry and honors there are enshrined abundant records of the glory that belonged to mighty names.
The custom of taking a device or badge, if not a motto, is traced to the earliest times of history. It is a point not to be doubted that the ancients used to bear crests and ornaments in the helmets and on the shields; for we see this clearly in Virgil, when he made the catalogue of the nations which came in favor of Turnus against the Trojans, in the eighth book of the Æneid; Amphiaraus then (as Pindar says), at the war of Thebes, bore a dragon on his shield. Similarly Statius writes of Capaneus and of Polinices that the one bore the Hydra and the other the Sphynx.