The first ruler who caused himself to be
represented as holding a round object surmounted by an ordinary cross, was Theodosius II., Emperor of the East.
The fact that for a long time the Victory, the Phœnix, and the Cross, were made use of as symbols which might be substituted one for another, is worthy of special note. For the facts that the round object held by Theodosius II. is as often surmounted by a Victory as by a Cross, and that a Victory instead of a Cross was often used by succeeding Christian Emperors, tend to show that the Victory, the Phœnix, and the Cross were allied in signification, and equally connected with the round object the nature and meaning of which we are about to enquire into.
The reader may possibly object that no case has been made out for such enquiry, inasmuch as not only did the cross in course of time entirely supplant the Victory, but the round object from first to last, and whether unsurmounted by anything or surmounted by a Victory or a Phœnix or a Cross, signified the world upon which we dwell, the round world, and nothing but the world.
Such is, of course, the popular assumption;
based upon what we are taught in school books and in standard works of reference. But, as a matter of fact, in many cases the round object admittedly signified an apple; the Golden Apple of the Hesperides: a well known phallic symbol. Whenever a round object unsurmounted by anything is to be seen in the hand of either the Sun-God Hercules or Venus the Goddess of Love, it admittedly may have been, for it admittedly often was, a representation, not of the world, but of the Golden Apple. And not only does it so occur upon a very large number of coins, but in some instances we see the Victory surmounting it; recalling to our minds the fact that victory, as signifying the triumph of Life over Death, had a phallic as well as a martial meaning, and is achieved every time that a man is born into the world as a result of the tasting of the fruit of the Tree of Life or of the knowledge of good and evil.
Moreover, though the fact is now for some reason or other ignored, the so-called Coronation Orb of Christian Monarchs was itself once known as the Golden Apple. It is so referred to in important Latin documents of the Middle Ages; for instance in the famous
Bull of Charles IV. regarding the Imperial elections, wherein we read of the right of the Counts Palatine of the Rhine to carry the symbol in question at the coronation of their Emperor. And to this very day the so-called Coronation Orb is known throughout Germany and Austria as Reichsapfel, the Imperial Apple.
It is therefore by no means certain that the round portion of the Coronation Orb which thus caused the name of "the Golden Apple" to be given to this compound Christian symbol, is not, like the cross above it, to some extent a phallic symbol.
Every one should know the classic story of the Golden Apple; how the tree which bore the Golden Apples grew up in the Garden of the Hesperides in honour of the wedding of Hera, a goddess who more or less personified the female sex; how the Golden Apples are variously said to have been dedicated to the Sun (Hellos), to the Sun-God (Dionysos), and to the Goddess of Love (Aphrodite); how the Sun-God Hercules as one of the twelve labours which represented the months, slew the Serpent which guarded the tree, and plucked the fruit; and how the Goddess Eris, who alone of all