ROMAN PAVEMENTS. 255 



Many Trojan shields have serpents that seem to issue from 

 the boss. Sometimes the buckler, or the helmet, of Hector is 

 adorned with a snake to show that he was protected by Apollo, 

 and a snake was an attribute of Apollo himself, as well as of 

 Minerva in her chatacter of Hygieia. 



^sculapius frequently appeared in the shape of a serpent, and 

 with serpents his worship was everywhere associated, for they 

 were able to discover healing herbs, and were the symbols alike 

 of prudence and of renovation; and he is often represented 

 with one hand resting on a serpent's head. 



To protect an edifice from defilement, a satirist suggested 

 that two serpents might be painted on the wall. (Pinge duos 

 angues locus est sacer, &c. Persius, Sat. L, 113.) 



A serpent on the sacred tree in the Garden of the Hesperides 

 protected the apples which were filched from it by guile. Those 

 persons who fancy that the Hebrew story of the Fall is an 

 allegory, may choose to imagine an earlier legend in which the 

 Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was guarded in like 

 manner, whilst the woman, in like manner, got possession of the 

 fruit by deceiving the reptile. 



The cobra of ancient Egypt was a serpent of goodness, and 

 was adored as a protector of grain. 



It is known that in the fourth century, B.C., the Gauls in the 

 north of Italy, in Gallia Cisalpina, had a cult of the serpent. 

 This the Druids inherited, and throughout Gallia Ulterior ser- 

 pent symbols have often been discovered. 



Naturalists tell us that on irritating the cobra it immediately 

 erects the- forepart of its body, swells its neck, opens its jaws, 

 extends its forked tongue, its eyes glitter, and it begins to hiss. 

 Where one is another may surely be found, for they are always 

 in pairs. And they can be inveigled into pots. (Figuier, 

 Reptiles, pp. 71-74.) 



Somewhere, I think in one of the Etruscan Museums of Italy, 

 I have seen a vase with twin snakes like that before us, but it is 

 not down in my notebook. Nevertheless, I am able to quote 

 from Dennis {Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria L, 169), an account 



