This emblem was also used in pagan art. The light-winged coursers who drew the airy chariot of Venus were doves. From the oaks of Dodona doves uttered oracles of the future. A dove was also the celestial messenger of Mahomet. The olive, too, was sacred to Minerva, and as the symbol of peace was woven into the victor’s crown.
Fig. 46.—Symbolical Peacock.
Other pagan types were employed, but with a new and nobler Christian significance. Thus the peacock, the proud bird of Juno, frequently appears in the Catacombs, not as the symbol of the all-seeing eye of God, in imitation of the pagan myth of the hundred eyes of Argus, but as the emblem of immortality.[376] Associated in meaning and frequently confounded in form with the peacock was the phœnix, the marvellous story of whose rejuvenescence from the ashes of its funeral pyre Clement of Rome recounts with unfaltering faith.[377] Lactantius makes it the theme of an elaborate poem,[378] and Tertullian cites it as a striking illustration of the resurrection of the dead.[379] It was also considered a type of the new birth and of eternal felicity. The cock, generally associated with St. Peter,[380] is interpreted as the symbol
of unsleeping vigilance; it is, perhaps, also an emblem or suggestion of the remorse of the apostle for his denial of his Lord.
Another adaptation of classic symbolism is the employment of the stag, the attribute of Diana, as the emblem of the Christian thirsting after the living waters. It is generally represented drinking at a stream, probably in allusion to the Psalmist’s panting after God as the hart after the water-brooks.[381] The hare sometimes occurs, an appropriate type of the persecution of the Christians, hunted amid those secret burrows in the earth like rabbits in their warrens. The horse is interpreted as symbolizing eagerness or speed in running the Christian race, or, perhaps, the course of life happily accomplished;[382] and the lion, fortitude of soul, or, from the notion that he slept with open eyes, vigilance against the snares of sin.[383] It is remarkable that the dog, a pagan symbol of fidelity,
never occurs except as accessory in hunting scenes of manifestly heathen type; probably on account of the abhorrence of this, to them, unclean beast, by the Jews, who so largely impressed their characteristics on Christian thought and feeling.[384] The serpent, a common pagan symbol, and with the cock the attribute of Æsculapius, nowhere appears but in the scene of the temptation of Eve by the “Old Serpent, the Devil.”
The vine is an appropriate symbol of the intimate union of the believer and Christ, and the olive tree of a life fruitful in good deeds, or of the church, in whose sheltering arms all souls may find rest, as the fowls of the air in the boughs of a tree. Flowers and fruits may be the emblems of future beatitude; and a loaf, of the bread of life or of the holy eucharist. The fountain is a type of the living waters, and the lyre, of the influence of the Divine Orpheus. The lamp and the light-house are the emblems of spiritual illumination through the gospel. The balance may refer to the just dealing of the deceased, or perhaps to the final judgment and the Eastern notion of psychostasy.[385] The house probably indicates the tabernacle of the body, or perhaps the last long home of the grave, or the house not made with hands on high. Most of the symbols, however, refer to the person and work of Christ, as the central and
dominating idea of the church of the Catacombs. Some of these are of such importance and of so frequent occurrence as to demand a more detailed examination.