CHAPTER II 



The quincuncial form adopted in the Arts It is employed in various 

 contrivances ; in architecture In the crowns of the ancients; 

 their beds, seats, lattices In nets, by lapidaries and sculptors 

 In the rural charm against dodder ; in the game of pentalithismus ; 

 in ligatures andforcipal instruments In the Roman battalia, ana 

 Grecian cavalry In the Macedonian phalanx ; the ancient cities 

 built in square, or parallelogram In the labyrinth of Crete, 

 probably in the ark, the table of shew bread, and those of the laiv 

 Several beds of the ancients mentioned. 



That the networks and nets of antiquity were little 

 different in the form from ours at present, is confirm- 

 able from the nets in the hands of the retiary gladiators, 

 the proper combatants with the secutores. To omit 

 the ancient conopeion or gnat-net of the ^Egyptians, 

 the inventors of that artifice ; the rushy labyrinths of 

 Theocritus ; the nosegay nets, which hung from the 

 head under the nostrils of princes ; and that uneasy 

 metaphor of reticulum jecoris, which some expound 

 the lobe, we the caul above the liver. As for that 

 famous network of Vulcan, which inclosed Mars and 

 Venus, and caused that unextinguishable laugh in 

 heaven, since the gods themselves could not discern 

 it, we shall not pry into it : although why Vulcan 

 bound them, Neptune loosed them, and Apollo should 

 first discover them, might afford no vulgar mythology. 



