assification would be the division of the entire
population of the commonwealth into 4x5=20 categories of people, grouped
under twenty local and four central governments, whose representatives in
turn were under the rule of the supreme central dual powers. Having thus
sketched, in a brief and preliminary way, the expansion of the idea of
dividing all things into four parts, the bud of which was the swastika,
let us examine the Mexican application of the idea of duality, pausing
first to review the data relating to the Cihuacoatl, the personification
of the Earth, the Below and the coadjutor of Montezuma.

Nothing has been definitely recorded about his personality, for he seems
to have lived in absolute seclusion during the first occupation of Mexico
by the Spaniards. He is frequently alluded to, however, and Cortes,
Herrera, Torquemada and others, inform us that he had acted as Montezuma's
substitute and led the native troops against the Spaniards. It is
interesting to find that after the Conquest Cortes appointed him as
governor of the City of Mexico. "I gave him the charge of re-peopling the
capital and in order to invest him with greater authority, I reinstated
him in the same position, that of Cihuacoatl, which he had held in the
time of Montezuma" (Carta Cuarta, Veytia I, p. 110).

Quite indirectly, it is possible to learn what sort of military equipment
had been adopted by the Cihuacoatl when he acted as war-chief. Amongst
certain presents, which were sent by Cortes to Charles V and are minutely
described in vol. XII of the "Documentas ineditas del Archivio de Indias,"
p. 347, there are several suits of armor, which could only have been
appropriately worn by the "woman serpent." One suit consisted of a
"corselet with plates of gold and with woman's breasts" and a skirt with
blue bands. Another suit, instead of the breasts, exhibited a great wound
in the chest, like that of a person who had been sacrificed. In another
list (by Diego de Soto, p. 349) a shield is described "which displayed a
sacrificed man, in gold, with a gaping wound in his breast, from which
blood was streaming...." It is obvious that the first of these suits of
armor conveyed figuratively the name and the second the office of the
Cihuacoatl of whom Duran speaks as follows:

"He whose office it was to perform the rite of killing [the victim] was
revered as the supreme pontiff and his name or title and pontifical robes
varied according to the diff