208 PRESTON ROMAN PAVEMENT. 



tho inner square the space is occupied by fretted spirals ; and 

 the central panel sustains a rosette, a disc with eight rays. The 

 Preston pavement is signed with the signature of the lotus. The 

 rayed circle, the triangle supports, the fretted spirals, the floral 

 frieze, are, in all their details, lotus derivatives. 



POSTSCRIPTUM. 



The Vikings, in some of their wanderings, must have seen 

 the solar-duplex. They took it as a suitable sign for their 

 sun-god Frey, and, in their decorative metal-work, placed it 

 beside the triquetra (Worsaae, Danish Art, p. 197). A similar 

 association may be seen in a church at Assisi, IX. cent., where 

 the two symbols, now with a Christian significance, rest on the 

 lateral limbs of a Latin cross (Cattaneo, op. '/., p. 197). 



The term "solar cross" is too restrictive. It would be better 

 to call it the " sign of orientation." Its equal limbs indicate 

 the four cardinal points. It stands as a solar symbol, and it 

 decussates the sun's disc, because it is the sun that determines 

 the east and the west, the south and the north. The equilateral 

 cross, which designates territorial expansion in certain picture- 

 writings, does so by spreading its equal arms to the four quarters 

 of the world. But it is especially the solar cross of North 

 America that should be called the Sign of Orientation, since it 

 was used by the Indians to specify the winds which were some- 

 times made to issue from holes in its limbs. A sign, among 

 the same people, that accidentally resembles the Latin cross, 

 stood for rain ; the heavens being represented by the transverse, 

 and the downpour by the vertical bar. 



By the car-driving nations of the old world, the decussated 

 solar disc was developed into a six-rayed wheel, the " roue 

 solaire," which was used in Chaldaean worship, as a symbol of 

 the sun, B.C. 600 (Perrot and Chipiez, Hist, of Art, II., 275). 

 The Gaulish sun-god is represented as carrying a six-rayed 

 wheel on his shoulder (Gaidoz, Symbolisme de la Roue, p. 3). 



