stelae at
Copan and Quirigua, and the amanteca or tolteca, the master-architects and
builders of Mitla, Mexico, is furnished by Mr. M. H. Saville's recent
excavation of three remarkable subterraneous, cruciform chambers, the
largest of which is situated on the summit of a high hill near Mitla. The
interior of the latter is elaborately decorated with geometrical designs,
like those on the exterior of the Mitla palace. The extreme length from
east to west is 9m. 71cm., from north to south 8m. 18cm., and its roof was
composed of large flat stones. The entrance to this and the other
cruciform vaults is situated at the extremity of the western arm, which in
the case described was longer than the other arms.

The most remarkable example of such a cruciform crypt is, however, that
situated beneath the palace of Mitla, which has been figured by Dupaix in
Lord Kingsborough's Mexican Antiquities, vol. IX. This vault is also built
of the shape of a so-called "Greek" cross, but in its centre stands a
large circular stone column reaching from floor to ceiling. It is
impossible not to recognize the symbolism of this pillar situated in the
centre of a structure, the form of which symbolizes the Four Quarters and
the fundamental identity of the column occupying the centre of the Mitla
chamber and the Copan stelae standing above the centre of the hidden
cruciform vault. Details associated with the pillar which stood in the
Great Temple of Mexico (p. 53), and the "pedestal" erected on the hill of
justice at Guatemala (p. 79) definitely show that, in ancient America, the
column was also associated with star-cult, with the administration of
justice and central celestial and terrestrial government. Investigation
has shown that precisely the same ideas were associated with the circular,
square or octagonal columns of Egypt, Greece, Rome and Japan, where they
either constituted the images of the central supreme divinity, formed the
support for the statues of earthly "divine" rulers, or marked the centres
of the cosmos or state, bearing inscriptions of the sacred laws as in
Athens, or of the distances to all points of the empire, viz. the Roman
Milliarum Aureum.

It is remarkable to find that, whereas in ancient Byzantium the centre of
the city had been marked by a column surmounted by a colossal statue of
Apollo, a pillar or pole god, Constantine erected a "spacious edifice,
from the centre of which all roads of the empire were measured."
Co