nsigns, flags, and standards,
but crosses, gilt and beautiful. Your victorious trophies not
only represent a cross, but a cross with a man upon
it."[345:1]

The principal silver coin among the Romans, called the _denarius_, had
on one side a personification of Rome as a warrior with a helmet, and on
the reverse, a chariot drawn by four horses. The driver had a
cross-standard in one hand. This is a representation of a denarius of
the earliest kind, which was first coined 296 B. C.[345:2] The cross was
used on the roll of the Roman soldiery as the sign of _life_.[345:3]

But, long before the Romans, long before the Etruscans, there lived in
the plains of Northern Italy a people to whom the cross was a religious
symbol, the sign beneath which they laid their dead to rest; a people of
whom history tells nothing, knowing not their name; but of whom
antiquarian research has learned this, that they lived in ignorance of
the arts of civilization, that they dwelt in villages built on platforms
over lakes, and that they trusted to the cross to guard, and may be to
revive, their loved ones whom they committed to the dust.

The examination of the tombs of Golasecca proves, in a most convincing,
positive, and precise manner that which the terramares of Emilia had
only indicated, but which had been confirmed by the cemetery of
Villanova, that above a thousand years B. C., the cross was already a
religious emblem of frequent employment.[345:4]

"It is more than a coincidence," (says the Rev. S.
Baring-Gould), "that Osiris by the cross should give life
eternal to the spirits of the just; that with the cross Thor
should smite the head of the great Serpent, and bring to life
those who were slain; that beneath the cross the Muysca
mothers should lay their babes, trusting to that sign to
secure them from the power of evil spirits; that with that
symbol to protect them, the ancient people of Northern Italy
should lay them down in the dust."[345:5]

The cross was also found among the ruins of Pompeii.[345:6]

It was a sacred emblem among the ancient Scandinavians.

"It occurs" (says Mr. R. Payne Knight), "on many Runic
monuments found in Sweden and Denmark, which are of an age
long anterior to the approach of Christianity to those
countries, and, probably, to its appearance in the
world."[346:1]

Their god Thor, son of the Supreme god Odin, and the