APPENDIX - The Roman Imperial Standard of the
Dragon of Symbol of Fire-worship
The passage of Ammianus Marcellinus, that speaks of that
standard, calls it "purpureum signum draconis"
(lib. xvi. cap. 12, p. 145). On this may be raised the question,
Has the epithet purpureum, as describing the colour of the
dragon, any reference to fire? The following extract from
Salverte may cast some light upon it: "The dragon
figured among the military ensigns of the Assyrians. Cyrus caused
it to be adopted by the Persians and Medes. Under the Roman
emperors, and under the emperors of Byzantium, each cohort or
centuria bore for an ensign a dragon" (Des Sciences Occultes, Appendix, Note A, p. 486). There is no doubt that the
dragon or serpent standard of the Assyrians and Persians had
reference to fire-worship, the worship of fire and the serpent
being mixed up together in both these countries (see LAYARD'S
Nineveh and its Remains, vol. ii. pp. 468-469). As the Romans,
therefore, borrowed these standards evidently from these sources,
it is to be presumed that they viewed them in the very same light
as those from whom they borrowed them, especially as that light
was so exactly in harmony with their own system of fire-worship.
The epithet purpureus or "purple" does not
indeed naturally convey the idea of fire-colour to us. But it
does convey the idea of red; and red in one shade or another,
among idolatrous nations, has almost with one consent been used
to represent fire. The Egyptians (BUNSEN, vol. i. p. 290), the
Hindoos (MOOR's Pantheon, "Brahma," p. 6), the
Assyrians (LAYARD's Nineveh, etc., vol. ii. chap. 3, p. 312,
Note), all represented fire by red. The Persians evidently did
the same, for when Quintus Curtius describes the Magi as
following "the sacred and eternal fire," he
describes the 365 youths, who formed the train of these Magi, as
clad "puniceis amiculis," in "scarlet
garments" (lib. iii. cap. 3, p. 42), the colour of
these garments, no doubt, having reference to the fire whose
ministers they were. Puniceus is equivalent to purpureus, for it
was in Phenicia that the purpura, or purple-fish, was originally
found. The colour derived from that purple-fish was scarlet (see
KITTO'S Illustrated Commentary on Exodus xxxv. 35, vol. i. p.
215), and it is the very name of that Phenician purple-fish, "arguna,"
that is used in Daniel v. 16 and 19, where it is said that he
that should interpret the handwriting on the wall should "be
clothed in scarlet." The Tyrians had the art of making
true purples, as well as scarlet; and there seems on doubt that
purpureus is frequently used in the ordinary sense attached to
our world purple. But the original meaning of the epithet is
scarlet; and as bright scarlet colour is a natural color to
represent fire, so we have reason to believe that that colour,
when used for robes of state among the Tyrians, had special
reference to fire; for the Tyrian Hercules, who was regarded as
the inventor of purple (BRYANT, vol. iii. p. 485), was regarded
as "King of Fire," (NONNUS, Dionysiaca, lib. xl. l. 369, vol. ii. p. 223). Now, when we find that the purpura
of Tyre produced the scarlet colour which naturally represented
fire, and that puniceus, which is equivalent to purpureus, is
evidently used for scarlet, there is nothing that forbids us to
understand purpureus in the same sense here, but rather requires
it. But even though it were admitted that the tinge was deeper,
and purpureus meant the true purple, as red, of which it is a
shade, is the established colour of fire, and as the serpent was
the universally acknowledged symbol of fire-worship, the
probability is strong that the use of a red dragon as the
Imperial standard of Rome was designed as an emblem of that
system of fire-worship on which the safety of the empire was
believed so vitally to hinge.
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