as the more likely of the two to have arisen as a combination of the Greek letters P and X; let us in passing briefly enquire into the origin of the so-called Monogram of Christ as a Pagan symbol.
If we seek for that origin as a combination of the first two letters of some other Greek word than Christos, Christ, and for the moment assume the letters Ρ and Χ to have occurred in the same order as in that word, we see at once that the monogram may have been derived
either from the word Chrestos, Good, or the word Chronos, Time, or the word Chrusos, Gold.
There is, by the way, another curious connection between the three Greek words in question. For the name of the famous god Kronos or Cronos was often spelt ΧΡΟΝΟΣ i.e., Chronos.[54] And this god Chronos—the father of Zeus; and more or less a personification of Time, the Old Father from whom we are all descended—was identical with Saturn, while the Saturnian Age was, as in Virgil's fourth eclogue, ever that spoken of as the Golden age when the ancients were referring to what they pictured as the good old times.
It will not do, however, to assume that if the symbol we are considering first arose as a combination of the Greek letters Ρ and Χ, they were of necessity taken from, and representative of, a word in which they occur in the same order as in Christos. And the fact that in the
, if not also in the
, the Ρ is the leading feature, gives emphasis to the point in question.