CoB ASP BER. Xe ee 
TOTEMS, TITLES, AND NAMES. 
The employment of pictographs to designate tribes, groups within 
tribes, and individual persons has been the most frequent of all the 
uses to which they have been applied. Indeed, the constant need 
that devices to represent the terms styled by grammarians proper 
names should be readily understood for identification has, more than 
any other cause, maintained and advanced pictography as an art, and 
in some parts of the world has evolved from it syllabaries and after- 
wards alphabets. From the same origin came heraldry, which in time 
designated with absolute accuracy persons and families for the benefit 
of letterless people. Trade-marks have the same history. 
From the earliest times men have used emblems to indicate their 
tribes or clans. Homer makes no clear allusion to their manifestation 
at the poetic siege of Troy; but even if his Greeks did not bear them, 
other nations of the period did. The earlier Egyptians carried images 
of bulls and crocodiles into battle, probably at first with religious senti- 
ments. Each of the twelve tribes of Israel had a special ensign of its 
own, which is now generally considered to have been totemic. The 
subjects of Semiramis adopted doves and pigeons as their token in 
deference to their queen, whose name meant ‘‘ dove.” 
At later dates Athens chose an owl for her sign, as a compliment to 
Minerva; Corinth, a winged horse, in memory of Pegasus and his 
fountain; Carthage, a horse’s head, in homage to Neptune; Persia, the 
sun, because its people worshiped fire; Rome, an eagle, in deference 
to Jupiter. These objects appear to have been carved in wood or metal. 
There is no evidence of anything resembling modern flags, except, per- 
haps, in parts of Asia, until the Romans began to use something like 
them about the time of Cesar. But these small signs had no national 
or public character so as to be comparable with the eagles on the Ro- 
man standard; nor was any floating banner associated with ruling 
power until Constantine gave a religious meaning to the labarum. 
Emblems also were often adopted by political and religious parties, 
e. g., the cornstalks and slings of the Mazarinists and anti-Mazarinists 
during the Fronde, the caps and hats in the Swedish diet in 1788, the 
scarf of the Armagnaes, and the cross of the Burgundians. The topic 
of emblems is further discussed in Chapter XVIII. 
As with increased culture clans and tribes have become nations, 
so there has been an evolution by which the ensigns of bands and 
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