84 



The practice of bearing national devices displayed, in painling 

 sculpture, or e mbroidery, upon the * military standard of the state, 

 is one of the earliest and most universal customs of mankind. We 

 may collect, from the classical authors, from the historians and 

 antiquarians of more barbarous states, and from the sacred wri- 

 tings, more particularly from the frequent allusions to it with which 

 the prophecies abound, the general prevalence and antiquity of 

 the custom. The early accounts which we possess of the Egyp- 

 tians and of the Israelites enable us to trace its origin with sufh- 

 cient certainty. We are informed by Diodorus Siculus,-|- that the 

 first race of Egyptians, unable, on account of the confusion of 

 their bands, to resist the onsets of their enemies, placed the fi- 

 gures of beasts upon the spears of their leaders, and, by means 

 of the order thus obtained, succeeded in discomfiting their anta- 

 gonists — The arrangement for the march of the returning Israel- 

 ites was thus ordained by the Deity ; " Every man of the children 

 " of Israel shall pitch by his own standard, with the ensign of their 

 " father's house." It appears then, that the practice arose in the 

 manifest necessity of having some bond of union with each leader, 

 some mark by which his adherents might be enabled " to follow 

 " him-f- on to victory, or, in case of a rout, to rally about his 



* Cities were frequently in antient times distinguished by their emblems ; Bryant's My- 

 thol. 2. 288. For the use of them in ships, see Acts of the Apostles 28. 11. Potter's 

 Antiq. of Greece 2 129. Ovid, Paris Helense v. 114 ; and Trist. Lib. 1. E). 9, Argonaut. 

 Lib. l.v. 201; and the first chorus of Iphig. in Aulide. The fable of Europa was an 

 allegory of the following history : The vessel which bore the maid was dedicated to Jupiter, 

 and ornamented with the device of a bull ; hence she was poetically feigned to have 



been forcibly carried over the seas by the deity in the shape of that animal Potter ubi sup. 



\ Lib. I. f Carte's Life of Ormonde, preface. 



