An Iranian Standard used as a Christian Symbol

Abstract

One would naturally expect that the standards of the Christian emperors of Rome, which are often represented on Roman coins, would be decorated with well-known Christian symbols, and that they would show the cross when not the monogram. In fact part of them do bear the emblems we expect, but certainly not all: a great number of the banners show devices we never learned to look upon as Christian. Very frequent, for instance, is a big circle, or two concentric circles; a combination of five small this matter: they do not distinguish between the various forms of the standards, but call them all labarum.