num_pages: 112
description: Excerpt from Symbolism on Greek Coins Geoy yloc (=d1v1 F[ilius] on Roman Imperial coins) means 'son of the Deified not 'son of God' as in the acrostic. How ever, one should not beg the question of. Imperial deification which was tacitly acknowledged during the life-time of the reigning emperor as well as openly concurred in after his death. It was only one step more from the cult the dead to that of the living emperor.1 The Chris tians of Alexandria may therefore have seen in the phrase an implica tion of divinity. But Alexandria was not the original home of the symbolism, the monuments on which it first occurs being found in Rome.2 Again, it is doubtful if the symbolism was known as early as the First Century A. D. There are no monuments bearing it which can be dated much before the middle of the Second Century. Furthermore, the fish symbol is not mentioned in the Physiologus (6 (dumoxdyoe), a work on animal symbolism written by an Alexandrian Greek about the first half of this same Century. This treatise is a sort of Natural History, a compendium of marvellous tales explaining the mystical meanings of animals and plants with moral applications, a kind of theological zool ogy and botany. If the fish symbol was in use at the time of this alle gorical manual, we should certainly expect to find it here recorded. The Christian fathers, too, before Tertullian, end of. The Second Cen tury, make no reference to the symbol. It is safe to assume, then, that the symbolism was not widely current in Rome until about 150 A. D. (round date). Mowat's theory which is full of improbabilities, and extremely artificial, would not require more than passing notice if it were not for the fact that it has been adopted as the generally accepted interpretation in a recent handbook on Christian archaeology of con siderable authority, (k. M. Kaufmann, Handbuch der christlichen Archaologie. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
language: English
title: Symbolism on Greek Coins
publisher: S.J. Durst