Liturgy
Liturgy is the customary public worship performed by a religious group. As a religious phenomenon, liturgy represents a communal response to and participation in the sacred through activity reflecting praise, supplication or repentance, it forms a basis for establishing a relationship with a divine agency, as well as with other participants in the liturgy. Technically liturgy forms a subset of ritual; the word liturgy, sometimes equated in English as "service", refers to a formal ritual, which may or may not be elaborate, enacted by those who understand themselves to be participating in a action with the divine. Not every religious ritual is a liturgy. A daily activity such as the Muslim salah and Jewish synagogue services would be ritual but not liturgy; the word liturgy, derived from the technical term in ancient Greek, which means "work of the people" is a literal translation of the two words "litos ergos" or "public service". In origin it signified the expensive offerings wealthy Greeks made in service to the people, thus to the polis and the state.
Through the leitourgia, the rich carried a financial burden and were correspondingly rewarded with honours and prestige. The leitourgia were assigned by the polis, the State and Roman Empire and became obligatory in the course of the 3rd century A. D; the performance of such supported the patron's standing among the popular at large. The holder of a Hellenic leitourgia was not taxed a specific sum, but was entrusted with a particular ritual, which could be performed with greater or lesser magnificence; the chief sphere remained that of civic religion, embodied in the festivals: M. I. Finley notes "in Demosthenes' day there were at least 97 liturgical appointments in Athens for the festivals, rising to 118 in a Panathenaic year." However groups of rich citizens were assigned to pay for expenses such as civic amenities and payment of warships. Under the Roman Empire, such obligations, known as munera, devolved into a competitive and ruinously expensive burden, avoided when possible; these included a wide range of expenses having to do with civic infrastructure and amenities.
Buddhist liturgy is a formalized service of veneration and worship performed within a Buddhist Sangha community in nearly every traditional denomination and sect in the Buddhist world. It is done once or more times a day and can vary among the Theravada and Vajrayana sects; the liturgy consists of chanting or reciting a sutra or passages from a sutras, a mantra, several gathas. Depending on what practice the practitioner wishes to undertake, it can be done at a temple or at home; the liturgy is always performed in front of an object or objects of veneration and accompanied by offerings of light, incense and food. Jewish liturgy are the prayer recitations; these prayers with instructions and commentary, are found in the siddur, the traditional Jewish prayer book. In general, Jewish men are obligated to pray three times a day within specific time ranges. While, according to the Talmud, women are only required to pray once daily, as they are exempted from obligations that are time dependent. Traditionally, three prayer services are recited daily: Shacharit or Shaharit, from the Hebrew shachar or shahar "morning light", Mincha or Minha, the afternoon prayers named for the flour offering that accompanied sacrifices at the Temple in Jerusalem, Arvit or Maariv, from "nightfall".
Additional prayers: Musaf are recited by Orthodox and Conservative congregations on Shabbat, major Jewish holidays, Rosh Chodesh. A fifth prayer service, Ne'ila, is recited only on the Day of Atonement. In Christianity, a distinction is made between "liturgical" and "non-liturgical" churches based on how elaborate or antiquated the worship. Others object to this usage, arguing that this terminology obscures the universality of public worship as a religious phenomenon, thus the open or waiting worship of Quakers is liturgical, since the waiting itself until the Holy Spirit moves individuals to speak is a prescribed form of Quaker worship, sometimes referred to as "the liturgy of silence". In Christianity, the term "the liturgy" refers to a standardised order of events observed during a religious service, be it a sacramental service or a service of public prayer. In the Catholic tradition, liturgy is the participation of the people in the work of God, the saving work of Jesus Christ. In the liturgy, Christ continues the work of redemption.
The term "liturgy" in Greek means "work for the people", but a better translation is "public service" or "public work", as made clear from the origin of the term as described above. The early Christians adopted the word to describe their principal act of worship, the Sunday service; this service, liturgy, or ministry is a duty for Christians as a priestly people by their baptism into Christ and participation
Baton (conducting)
A baton is a stick, used by conductors to enlarge and enhance the manual and bodily movements associated with directing an ensemble of musicians. Modern batons are made of a lightweight wood, fiberglass or carbon fiber, tapered to a comfortable grip called a "bulb", made of cork, walnut, rosewood, or aluminium and that may be tailored to a conductor's needs. Professional conductors have personal specifications for a baton based on their own physical demands and the nature of the performance: Sir Henry Wood and Herbert von Karajan are some examples. Historic examples of their construction include one given to the French composer Louis-Antoine Jullien in the mid 1850s prior to his first visit to the United States: it is described as "a gorgeous baton made of maplewood, richly mounted in gold and set with costly diamonds." Batons have varied in length from about 10 to 24 inches though a range of between 12 and 26 inches is more used. When Gaspare Spontini arrived in Dresden in 1844, Wagner had a baton made from a thick ebony staff with ivory knobs at either end.
Spontini purportedly held the baton in the center with a fist, using it like a marshall's staff—not for beating time but rather for commanding the opera. Conductors view their gestures as the primary means to communicate musical ideas, whether or not they choose to use batons. Leonard Bernstein is quoted as saying, "If one uses a baton, the baton itself must be a living thing, charged with a kind of electricity, which makes it an instrument of meaning in its tiniest movement."The usual way of holding the baton is between the thumb and the first two fingers with the grip in against the palm of the hand. The baton is held in the right hand though some left-handed conductors hold it in the left. Young left-handed conductors are, sometimes encouraged to learn right-handed conducting; some conductors like Pierre Boulez, Georges Prêtre, Leopold Stokowski and Dimitri Mitropoulos, choose not to hold a baton, preferring to conduct only with their hands. This method is common with choral conductors. If the conductor does not use a baton, their hands must do the job with equal clarity, the gestures must be first and always meaningful in terms of the music.
According to Gustav Meier, most conductors use a baton to "increase the visibility of the beat information". Before the use of the baton, orchestral ensembles were conducted from the harpsichord or the first violin lead. Conductors first began to use violin bows or rolled pieces of paper before the modern baton was introduced; the first reported use of the conducting staff in a performance dates back to 709 BC, during which the leader, "Pherekydes of Patrae, giver of rhythm" had...stationed himself in the centre and had placed himself on a high seat, waving a golden staff, the players on the flute and cythara were...placed in a circle around him...now when Pherekydes with his golden staff gave the signal, all the art-experienced men began in one and the same time... On 8 January 1687, Jean-Baptiste Lully was conducting a Te Deum to celebrate Louis XIV of France's recent recovery from illness; as was the common practice, he was beating time by banging a long staff against the floor when he struck his toe, creating an abscess.
The wound turned gangrenous, but Lully refused to have his toe amputated and the infection spread, resulting in his death on 22 March. Different eyewitnesses to the premiere performance of Joseph Haydn's Creation in April of 1798 indicate that Haydn used a baton to conduct with his hands. Said Princess Eleanor von Liechtenstein, "Hayden gave the tempo with his two hands; the baton began to gain in popularity between 1820 and 1840. The first batons were narrow and conical wooden wands that had an engraving of three rings near the bottom that indicated the handle; the Hallé Orchestra reported that Daniel Turk used a baton in 1810, with motions so exuberant that he hit the chandelier above his head and showered himself with glass. Louis Spohr claimed to have introduced the baton to England on 10 April 1820, while conducting his second symphony with the Philharmonic Society in London. Witnesses noted that the conductor "sits there and turns over the leaves of the score but after all, he cannot, without... his baton, lead on his musical army".
It is more that he used his baton in rehearsal than in concert. It was 1825 when George Smart reported that he sometimes'beat time in front with a short stick'; when Felix Mendelssohn returned to London in 1832, despite objections from violin leaders, he was encouraged to go on with his baton. Despite the initial disagreement, the baton was in regular use at the Philharmonic a year later. In the early 1940s, while big band jazz music was on the rise, the use of a conductor became paramount to the success of the ensemble. To accommodate this, these conductors started using specialized "jazz batons." These specialized batons were shorter than standard batons, ranging from 6 to 9 inches in length. Several famous jazz conductors that used these specific batons include Quincy Jones, Gunther Schuller and Richard Rogers. Although they are used today, many accomplished jazz conductors use them during ballads
Crosier
A crosier is a stylized staff carried by high-ranking Roman Catholic, Eastern Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and some Lutheran, United Methodist and Pentecostal prelates. Other typical insignia of many of these prelates are the mitre, the pectoral cross, the episcopal ring. A crosier staff is a part of the tradition of Jewish Christianity; the origin of the crozier as a staff of authority is uncertain, but there were many secular and religious precedents in the ancient world. One example is the lituus, the traditional staff of the ancient Roman augurs, as well as the staff of Moses in the Hebrew Bible. Many other types of the staff of office were found in periods, some continuing to the modern day in ceremonial contexts. In the Western Church the usual form has been a shepherd's crook, curved at the top to enable animals to be hooked; this relates to the many metaphorical references to bishops as the shepherds of their "flock" of Christians, following the metaphor of Christ as the Good Shepherd.
The Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Rite Catholic crosier is found in two common forms. One is tau-shaped, with curved arms, surmounted by a small cross; the other has a top comprising a pair of sculptured serpents or dragons curled back to face each other, with a small cross between them. The symbolism in the latter case is of the bronze serpent made by Moses as related in Numbers 21:8-9, it is reminiscent of the caduceus of Hermes or the rod of the ancient Greek god Asclepius, whose worship was centered around the Aegean, including Asia Minor, indicating the role of the bishop as healer of spiritual diseases. The staff of Moses is first mentioned in the Book of Exodus, when God appears to Moses in the burning bush. God asks what Moses has in his hand, Moses answers "a staff"; the staff is miraculously transformed into a snake and back into a staff. The staff is thereafter referred to as the "rod of God" or "staff of God". "And thou shalt take this rod in thine hand, wherewith thou shalt do signs."
And Moses went and returned to Jethro, his father in law, said unto him, "Let me go, I pray thee, return unto my brethren which are in Egypt and see whether they be yet alive." And Jethro said to Moses, "Go in peace." The LORD said unto Moses in Midian, "Go, return into Egypt: for all the men are dead which sought thy life." And Moses set them upon an ass. Moses and Aaron appear before the pharaoh; the pharaoh's sorcerers are able to transform their own rods into serpents, but Aaron's swallows them. Aaron's rod is again used to turn the Nile blood-red, it is used several times on God's command to initiate the plagues of Egypt. During the Exodus, Moses stretches out his hand with the staff to part the Red Sea. While in the "wilderness" after leaving Egypt, Moses does not follow God's command to " speak ye unto the rock before their eyes" instead he strikes the rock with the rod to create a spring for the Israelites from which to drink; because Moses did not sanctify God before them but said "Hear now, ye rebels.
Thus, Moses not God. For not doing what God commanded, God punished Moses by not letting him enter into the Promised Land. Moses uses the staff in the battle at Rephidim between the Israelites and the Amalekites; when he holds up the "rod of God", the Israelites "prevail". When he drops it, their enemies gain the upper hand. Aaron and Hur help him to keep the staff raised; the crosier is the symbol of the governing office of Apostle. In Western Christianity, the crosier is shaped like a shepherd's crook. A bishop or church head bears this staff as "shepherd of the flock of God" the community under his canonical jurisdiction, but any bishop, whether or not assigned to a functional diocese, may use a crosier when conferring sacraments and presiding at liturgies; the Catholic Caeremoniale Episcoporum says that, as a sign of his pastoral function, a bishop uses a crosier within his territory, but any bishop celebrating the liturgy solemnly with the consent of the local bishop may use it. It adds that, when several bishops join in a single celebration, only the one presiding uses a crosier.
A bishop holds his crosier with his left hand, leaving his right hand free to bestow blessings. The Caeremoniale Episcoporum states that the bishop holds the crosier with the open side of the crook forward, or towards the people, it states that a bishop holds the crosier during a procession and when listening to the reading of the Gospel, giving a homily, accepting vows, solemn promises or a profession of faith, when blessing people, unless he must lay his hands on them. When the bishop is not holding the crosier, it is put in the care of an altar server, known as the "crosier bearer", who may wear around his shoulders a shawl-like veil called a vimpa, so as to hold the crosier without touching it with his bare hands. Another altar server wearing a vimpa, holds the mitre when the bishop is not wearing it. In the Anglican tradition, the crosier may be carried by someone else walking before the bishop in a procession; the crosier is conferred upon a bishop during his ordination to the episcopacy.
It is presented to an abbot at his blessing, an ancient custom symbolizing his shepherding of the monastic community. Although there is no provision for the presentation of a crosier in th
Dandy
A dandy is a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance, refined language, leisurely hobbies, pursued with the appearance of nonchalance in a cult of self. A dandy could be a self-made man who strove to imitate an aristocratic lifestyle despite coming from a middle-class background in late 18th- and early 19th-century Britain. Previous manifestations of the petit-maître and the Muscadin have been noted by John C. Prevost, but the modern practice of dandyism first appeared in the revolutionary 1790s, both in London and in Paris; the dandy cultivated cynical reserve, yet to such extremes that novelist George Meredith, himself no dandy, once defined cynicism as "intellectual dandyism". Some took a more benign view. Honoré de Balzac introduced the worldly and unmoved Henri de Marsay in La fille aux yeux d'or, a part of La Comédie Humaine, who fulfils at first the model of a perfect dandy, until an obsessive love-pursuit unravels him in passionate and murderous jealousy. Charles Baudelaire defined the dandy, in the "metaphysical" phase of dandyism, as one who elevates æsthetics to a living religion, that the dandy's mere existence reproaches the responsible citizen of the middle class: "Dandyism in certain respects comes close to spirituality and to stoicism" and "These beings have no other status, but that of cultivating the idea of beauty in their own persons, of satisfying their passions, of feeling and thinking....
Dandyism is a form of Romanticism. Contrary to what many thoughtless people seem to believe, dandyism is not an excessive delight in clothes and material elegance. For the perfect dandy, these things are no more than the symbol of the aristocratic superiority of mind." The linkage of clothing with political protest had become a English characteristic during the 18th century. Given these connotations, dandyism can be seen as a political protest against the levelling of egalitarian principles including nostalgic adherence to feudal or pre-industrial values, such as the ideals of "the perfect gentleman" or "the autonomous aristocrat". Paradoxically, the dandy required an audience, as Susann Schmid observed in examining the "successfully marketed lives" of Oscar Wilde and Lord Byron, who exemplify the dandy's roles in the public sphere, both as writers and as personae providing sources of gossip and scandal. Nigel Rodgers in The Dandy: Peacock or Enigma? Questions Wilde's status as a genuine dandy, seeing him as someone who only assumed a dandified stance in passing, not a man dedicated to the exacting ideals of dandyism.
The origin of the word is uncertain. Eccentricity, defined as taking characteristics such as dress and appearance to extremes, began to be applied to human behavior in the 1770s. A later Scottish border ballad, circa 1780 features the word, but without all the contextual aspects of its more recent meaning; the original, full form of'dandy' may have been jack-a-dandy. It was a vogue word during the Napoleonic Wars. In that contemporary slang, a "dandy" was differentiated from a "fop" in that the dandy's dress was more refined and sober than the fop's. In the twenty-first century, the word dandy is a jocular sarcastic adjective meaning "fine" or "great"; the model dandy in British society was George Bryan "Beau" Brummell, in his early days, an undergraduate student at Oriel College, Oxford and an associate of the Prince Regent. Brummell was not from an aristocratic background. A. Barbey d'Aurevilly observed in 1845. Never unpowdered or unperfumed, immaculately bathed and shaved, dressed in a plain dark blue coat, he was always brushed fitted, showing much starched linen, all freshly laundered, composed with an elaborately knotted cravat.
From the mid-1790s, Beau Brummell was the early incarnation of "the celebrity", a man chiefly famous for being famous. By the time Pitt taxed hair powder in 1795 to help pay for the war against France and to discourage the use of flour in such a frivolous product, Brummell had abandoned wearing a wig, had his hair cut in the Roman fashion, "à la Brutus". Moreover, he led the transition from breeches to snugly tailored dark "pantaloons," which directly led to contemporary trousers, the sartorial mainstay of men's clothes in the Western world for the past two centuries. In 1799, upon coming of age, Beau Brummell inherited from his father a fortune of thirty thousand pounds, which he spent on costume and high living. In 1816 he suffered the dandy's stereotyped fate. Men of more notable accomplishments than Beau Brummell adopted the dandiacal pose: George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron
Tretyakov Gallery
The State Tretyakov Gallery is an art gallery in Moscow, the foremost depository of Russian fine art in the world. The gallery's history starts in 1856 when the Moscow merchant Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov acquired works by Russian artists of his day with the aim of creating a collection, which might grow into a museum of national art. In 1892, Tretyakov presented his famous collection of 2,000 works to the Russian nation; the façade of the gallery building was designed by the painter Viktor Vasnetsov in a peculiar Russian fairy-tale style. It was built in 1902–04 to the south from the Moscow Kremlin. During the 20th century, the gallery expanded to several neighboring buildings, including the 17th-century church of St. Nicholas in Tolmachi; the collection contains more than 130,000 exhibits, ranging from Theotokos of Vladimir and Andrei Rublev's Trinity to the monumental Composition VII by Wassily Kandinsky and the Black Square by Kazimir Malevich. In 1977 the Gallery kept a significant part of the George Costakis collection.
In May 2012, the Tretyakov Art Gallery played host to the prestigious FIDE World Chess Championship between Viswanathan Anand and Boris Gelfand as the organizers felt the event would promote both chess and art at the same time. Pavel Tretyakov started collecting art in the middle of 1850; the founding year of the Tretyakov Gallery is considered to be 1856, when Tretyakov purchased two paintings of Russian artists: Temptation by N. G. Schilder and Skirmish with Finnish Smugglers by V. G. Kudyakov, although earlier, in 1854–1855, he had bought 11 drawings and nine pictures by Dutch Old Masters. In 1867 the Moscow City Gallery of Pavel and Sergei Tretyakov was opened; the Gallery’s collection consisted of 1,276 paintings, 471 sculptures and 10 drawings by Russian artists, as well as 84 paintings by foreign masters. In August 1892 Tretyakov presented his art gallery to the city of Moscow as a gift. In the collection at this time, there were 1,287 paintings and 518 graphic works of the Russian school, 75 paintings and eight drawings of European schools, 15 sculptures and a collection of icons.
The official opening of the museum called the Moscow City Gallery of Pavel and Sergei Tretyakov took place on August 15, 1893. The gallery was located in a mansion that the Tretykov family had purchased in 1851; as the Tretyakov collection of art grew, the residential part of the mansion filled with art and it became necessary to make additions to the mansion in order to store and display the works of art. Additions were made in 1873, 1882, 1885, 1892 and 1902–1904, when there was the famous façade, designed in 1900–1903 by architect V. Bashkirov from the drawings of the artist Viktor Vasnetsov. Construction of the façade was managed by the architect A. M. Kalmykov. In early 1913, the Moscow City Duma elected Igor Grabar as a trustee of the Tretyakov Gallery. On June 3, 1918, the Tretyakov Gallery was declared owned by Russian Federated Soviet Republic and was named the State Tretyakov Gallery. Igor Grabar was again appointed director of the museum. With Grabar’s active participation in the same year, the State Museum Fund was created, which up until 1927 remained one of the most important sources of replenishment of the gallery's collection.
In 1926 architect and academician A. V. Shchusev became the director of the gallery. In the following year the gallery acquired the neighboring house on Maly Tolmachevsky Lane. After restructuring in 1928, it housed the gallery's administration, academic departments, manuscripts department, funds and graphics staffs. In 1985–1994, an administrative building was built from the design of architect A. L. Bernstein with two floors and height equal to that of the exposition halls. In 1928 serious renovations were made to the gallery to provide ventilation. In 1929 electricity was installed. In 1929 the church of St. Nicholas in Tolmachi was closed, in 1932 the building was given to the gallery and became a storage facility for paintings and sculptures; the church was connected to the exposition halls and a top floor was built, specially designed for exhibiting a painting by A. A. Ivanov,The Appearance of Christ to the People. A transition space was built between rooms located on either side of the main staircase.
This ensured the continuity of the view of exposure. The gallery began to develop a new concept of accommodating exhibits. In 1936, a new two floor building was constructed, located on the north side of the main building – it is known as the Schusevsky building; these halls were first used for exhibitions, since 1940 have been included in the main route of exposure. From the first days of the Great War, the gallery's personnel began dismantling the exhibition, as well as those of other museums in Moscow, in preparation for evacuating during wartime. Paintings were rolled on wooden shafts, covered with tissue paper, placed in boxes, sheathed with waterproof material. In the middle of the summer of 1941 a train of 17 wagons traveled from Moscow and brought the collection to Novosibirsk; the gallery was not reopened in Moscow until May 1945, upon the conclusion of the Great War. In 1956, in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Tretyakov Gallery, the Alexander Ivanov Hall was completed. From 1980 to 1992, the director of the Tretyakov Gallery was Y. K. Korolev.
Because of the increased number of visitors, Korolev was engaged in expanding the area of exposition. In 1983, construction work began to expand the gallery. In 1985 the Depository, a repository of works of art and restoration workshops, was commis
Caduceus
The caduceus is the staff carried by Hermes in Greek mythology and by Hermes Trismegistus in Greco-Egyptian mythology. The same staff was borne by heralds in general, for example by Iris, the messenger of Hera, it is a short staff entwined by two serpents, sometimes surmounted by wings. In Roman iconography, it was depicted being carried in the left hand of Mercury, the messenger of the gods, guide of the dead, protector of merchants, gamblers and thieves; some accounts suggest that the oldest known imagery of the caduceus has its roots in a Mesopotamian origin with the Sumerian god Ningishzida. C. to 3000 B. C; as a symbolic object, it represents Hermes, by extension trades, occupations, or undertakings associated with the god. In Antiquity, the caduceus provided the basis for the astrological symbol representing the planet Mercury. Thus, through its use in astrology and astronomy it has come to denote the planet and elemental metal of the same name, it is said the wand would send the awake to sleep.
If applied to the dying, their death was gentle. By extension of its association with Mercury and Hermes, the caduceus is a recognized symbol of commerce and negotiation, two realms in which balanced exchange and reciprocity are recognized as ideals; this association is ancient, consistent from the Classical period to modern times. The caduceus is used as a symbol representing printing, again by extension of the attributes of Mercury; the caduceus is incorrectly used as a symbol of healthcare organizations and medical practice in North America, due to confusion with the traditional medical symbol, the Rod of Asclepius, which has only one snake and is never depicted with wings. The term kerukeion denoted any herald's staff, not associated with Hermes in particular. In his study of the cult of Hermes, Lewis Richard Farnell assumed that the two snakes had developed out of ornaments of the shepherd's crook used by heralds as their staff; this view has been rejected by authors pointing to parallel iconography in the Ancient Near East.
It has been argued that the staff or wand entwined by two snakes was itself representing a god in the pre-anthropomorphic era. Like the herm or priapus, it would thus be a predecessor of the anthropomorphic Hermes of the classical era. William Hayes Ward discovered that symbols similar to the classical caduceus sometimes appeared on Mesopotamian cylinder seals, he suggested the symbol originated some time between 3000 and 4000 BC, that it might have been the source of the Greek caduceus. A. L. Frothingham incorporated Dr. Ward's research into his own work, published in 1916, in which he suggested that the prototype of Hermes was an "Oriental deity of Babylonian extraction" represented in his earliest form as a snake god. From this perspective, the caduceus was representative of Hermes himself, in his early form as the Underworld god Ningishzida, "messenger" of the "Earth Mother"; the caduceus is mentioned in passing by Walter Burkert as "really the image of copulating snakes taken over from Ancient Near Eastern tradition".
In Egyptian iconography, the Djed pillar is depicted as containing a snake in a frieze of the Dendera Temple complex. The caduceus appears as a symbol of the punch-marked coins of the Maurya Empire in India, in the third or second century BC. Numismatic research suggest that this symbol was the symbol of the Buddhist king Ashoka, his personal "Mudra"; this symbol was not used on the pre-Mauryan punch-marked coins, but only on coins of the Maurya period, together with the three arched-hill symbol, the "peacock on the hill", the triskelis and the Taxila mark. The Homeric hymn to Hermes relates how Hermes offered his lyre fashioned from a tortoise shell as compensation for the cattle he stole from his half brother Apollo. Apollo in return gave Hermes the caduceus as a gesture of friendship; the association with the serpent thus connects Hermes to Apollo, as the serpent was associated with Asclepius, the "son of Apollo". The association of Apollo with the serpent is a continuation of the older Indo-European dragon-slayer motif.
Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher pointed out that the serpent as an attribute of both Hermes and Asclepius is a variant of the "pre-historic semi-chthonic serpent hero known at Delphi as Python", who in classical mythology is slain by Apollo. One Greek myth of origin of the caduceus is part of the story of Tiresias, who found two snakes copulating and killed the female with his staff. Tiresias was turned into a woman, so remained until he was able to repeat the act with the male snake seven years later; this staff came into the possession of the god Hermes, along with its transformative powers. Another myth suggests. Separating them with his wand he brought about peace between them, as a result the wand with two serpents came to be seen as a sign of peace. In Rome, Livy refers to the caduceator who negotiated peace arrangements under the diplomatic protection of the caduceus he carried. In some vase paintings ancient depictions of the Greek kerukeion are somewhat different from the seen modern representation.
These representations feature the two snakes atop the staff, crossed to create a circle with the heads of the snakes resembling horns. This old graphic form, with an additional crossbar to the staff, seems to have provided the basis for the graphical sig
