[1] Sir Gardiner Wilkinson’s Ancient Egyptians, vol. iii. p. 158. Also, Rosellini Monumenti dell’Egitto e della Nubia.
[2] Aristotle, Problematum x. 14: “As with the things drawn above the shops, which, though they are small, appear to have breadth and depth.”
[3] “He hung the well-known sign in the front of his house.”
[5] “When the mice were conquered by the army of the weasels, (a story which we see painted on the taverns.)”
[6] Lib. ii. sat. vii.: “I admire the position of the men that are fighting, painted in red or in black, as if they were really alive; striking and avoiding each other’s weapons, as if they were actually moving.”
[7] De Oratore, lib. ii. ch. 71: “Now I shall shew you how you are, to which he answered, ‘Do, please.’ Then I pointed with my finger towards the Cock painted on the signboard of Marius the Cimberian, on the New Forum, distorted, with his tongue out and hanging cheeks. Everybody began to laugh.”
[8] Hist. Nat., xxxv. ch. 8: “After this I find that they were also commonly placed on the Forum. Hence that joke of Crassus, the orator. . . . On the Forum was also that of an old shepherd with a staff, concerning which a German legate, being asked at how much he valued it, answered that he would not care to have such a man given to him as a present, even if he were real and alive.”
[9] “There were, namely, taverns round about the Forum, and that picture [the Cock] had been put up as a sign.”
[10] The Bush certainly must be counted amongst the most ancient and popular of signs. Traces of its use are not only found among Roman and other old-world remains, but during the Middle Ages we have evidence of its display. Indications of it are to be seen in the Bayeux tapestry, in that part where a house is set on fire, with the inscription, _Hic domus incenditur_, next to which appears a large building, from which projects something very like a pole and a bush, both at the front and the back of the building.
[11] In Cædmon’s Metrical Paraphrase of Scripture History, (_circa_ A.D. 1000,) in the drawings relating to the history of Abraham, there are distinctly represented certain cruciform ornaments painted on the walls, which might serve the purpose of signs. (_See_ upon this subject under “RELIGIOUS SIGNS.”)