ROMAN PAVEMENTS AND INTRECCI. iji 



half a disc, and four concentric bands of blue, green, and red, 

 and a fifth band marked with radiating lines.* In art these 

 rays are sometimes floral. In a mural decoration of the Temple 

 of Isis at Pompeii, the sun's face is encircled by an alternation of 

 lotus bud and blossom. This flower was an attribute of Isis ; it 

 was, too, a sign of life and fecundity ; and above all it was a 

 symbol of the sun, Illustration IX., fig. i. 



With this may be compared a Christian sculpture, of the year 

 737, from the famous Baptistry at Cividalef which exhibits the 

 solar rosette, Illustration IX., fig. 2, encircled by the solar path 

 and adorned with a glory of lotus rays. This path is composed 

 of two separate meanders twisted together, and resembles that 

 which surrounds a cross on the Lincoln pavement. It ought, 

 however, to be made of a single meander that goes twice round 

 the circle, giving the appearance of two. Such a true intreccio 

 encloses the solar duplex on the Caerwent pavement, encircles 

 the solar disc on a spindle-whorl of Troy, and borders a scarab 

 of the XVIth dynasty 4 



A square sun with a fretted solar glory is common in mosaic 

 panels, as at Newton St. Loe. Illustration I., fig. 5, In art 

 the rays of a star are usually five. An eight-rayed star was 

 employed by the Assyrians, B.C. 840, to denote the sun. Similar 

 devices were cut, as Mithraic signs, on Gnostic gems, and they 

 entered, at last, into Christian symbolism. The eight solar rays 

 having betokened a restoration of life, the octagon acquired a like 

 significance, and the number eight became a sign of Regenera- 

 tion. 



The badges of the Roman legions are given in the Notitia 

 Dignitatum. They consist, in almost every instance, of a solar 

 cognisance, of a disc sometimes plain, sometimes rotate, 

 sometimes eight-rayed, and often in conjunction with the lunar 

 crescent. There is hardly a solar rosette on mosaic pavements 



* Sixth Mem., Arch. Survey of Egypt, p. 30. 



f Cattaueo, Arch, in Italy, Eugl. Trans., p. 106. 



I Schliemann's Ilios, fig; 1847. J Flinders Petrie's Scarabs, PL 26, fig, 716. 



