Imperial orb and little cross

Meaning

The orb bearing a little cross is a Christian political image in Part IV: the spiritual comparison · unit 52, placed in the hand of the highest governor of the Christian commonwealth. The author reads it as a sign that peaceful possession follows testing through suffering. He compares this shape with the sign assigned locally to antimony and says that ancient philosophers perhaps intended a similar meaning. That 'perhaps' prevents the analogy from becoming a proven history of the symbol. The English preserves the small cross and the qualification. The passage extends the image to Christians' school of the cross without securely identifying a particular historical ruler.