610 PICTURE-WRITING OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS. 
is held by the god of the sky or of the storm, The Assyrian artist who first, on the 
bas-reliefs of Nimroud or Malthai, doubled the trident or transformed it into a tri- 
fid fascicle, docile to the refinements and elegancies of classic art, by that means 
secured for the ancient Mesopotamian symbol the advantage over all the other 
representations of thunder with which it could compete. The Greeks, like the other 
Indo-European nations, seem to have represented the storm-fire under the features 
of a bird of prey. When they received the Asiatic figure of the thunderbolt, they 
put it in the eagle’s claws and made of it the scepter of Zeus, explaining the combi- 
nation, after their habit, by the story of the eagles bringing thunder to Zeus when 
he was preparing for the war against the Titans. Latin Italy transmitted the 
thunderbolt to Gaul, where, in the last centuries of paganism, it alternated on the 
Gallo-Roman monuments with the two-headed hammer. 
The emblem writers, so designated, have furnished an immense body 
of literature, and apparently have considered such pictures as those of 
the Winter Counts in the present work and also all symbols to be in- 
cluded in their proper scope. The best summary on the subject is by 
Henry Greene (a), from which the following condensed extract is taken: 
Of the changes through which a word may pass the word emblem presents one 
of the most remarkable instances. Its present signification, type, or allusive repre- 
sentation is of comparatively modern use, while its original meaning is obsolete. 
Among the Greeks an emblem meant something thrown in or inserted after the 
fashion of what we now call marquetry and mosaic work, or in the form of a de- 
tached ornament to be affixed to a pillar, a tablet, or a vase, and put off or on as 
there might be occasion. 
Quintilian (lib. 2, cap. 4), in enumerating the arts of oratory used by the plead- 
ers of his day, describes some of them as in the habit of preparing and committing 
to memory certain highly finished clauses, to be inserted (as occasion might arise) 
like emblems in the body of their orations. Such was the meaning of the term in 
the classical ages of Greece and Rome; nor was its signification altered until some 
time after the revival of literature in the fifteenth century. 
Thus, in their origin, emblems were the figures or ornaments fashioned by the 
tools of the artists, in metal or wood, independent of the vase, or the column, or the 
furniture they were intended to adorn; they might be affixed or detached at the 
promptings of the owner’s fancy. Then they were formed, as in mosaic, by placing 
side by side little blocks of colored stone, or tiles, or small sections of variegated 
wood, Raised or carved figures, however produced, came next to be considered as 
emblems; and afterwards any kind of figured ornament or device, whether carved 
or engraved or simply traced, on the walls and floors of houses or on vessels of wood, 
clay, stone, or metal. 
By a very éasy and natural step figures and ornaments of many kinds, when 
placed on smooth surfaces, were named emblems; and as these figures and orna- 
ments were very often symbolical, i. e., signs or tokens of a thought, a sentiment, a 
saying, or an event, the term emblem was applied to any painting, drawing, or 
print that was representative of an action, of a quality of the mind, or of any peeu- 
liarity or attribute of character. Emblems in fact were and are a species of hiero- 
glyphics, in which the figures or pictures, besides denoting the natural objects to 
which they bear resemblances, were employed to express properties of the mind, 
virtues and abstract ideas, and all the operations of the soul. 
The following remarks of the same author (b) are presented in this con- 
nection, though they pass beyond the scope of either symbols or emblems 
into other divisions of pictography, as classified in the present work: 
Coins and medals furnish most valuable examples of emblematical figures; indeed 
some of the emblem writers, as Sambucus, in 1564, were among the earliest to pub- 
