The evil eye. An account of this ancient and wide spread superstition

384 THE EVIL EYE chap.
female seated, whom we may take to be a
divinity, surrounded by so many symbols that she
seems to be intended for Fortuna Pantea, who is
called upon a Roman monument fortvn : omnivm-
GENT-ET-DEOR. In her left hand she holds a cornu-
copia, from which appear flowers and grapes. In
her right she holds a patera, which she is presenting
to a serpent twined round an altar of offerings.
At the top is a beardless head, enclosed in an
ornament like a crescent. Beneath the crescent is a
wheel-like object mounted on something unknown,
but the whole strikingly suggestive of the Ashantee
crescents (Fig. 88)
whole as the sun and moon. We see also the eagle;
the Dolphin ;
; and we may fairly explain the
^"^ the scabbard, or, as Minervini calls
it, the quiver ; the club ; the sistrum of Isis ; the
lyre ; the tongs (these are no shears) ; the caduceus;
the thyrsus of Bacchus, having the pine-cone at the
top ; the cymbals of Cybele, Bacchus, and Juno, suspended
to the "pomegranates of Proserpine," and
near them the ear of corn of Ceres. There is a
second serpent, Agathodemon, often seen in connec-
tion with Fortuna, ''"^ which is climbing up behind
and looking over her shoulder, much in the same
position as that on the hand (Fig. 157), whereon
again two serpents are represented.
Presuming that the illustrations, here brought
together for the first time, have been duly examined
and compared, we must now try to ascertain the
true object of the moulds represented by three of
them.
^"^ On the dolphin as a symbol of Neptune see Miiller, Handbtich,
§ 398, p. 645, Ed. Welcher.
•'•'^ On this see Gerhard, Agaihodcemon ttnd Bona Dea, p. i8 sq.