It was when Cyrus had entered Babylon that the Persians, for the first time, testified their homage to him by adoration; for, "before this," says Xenophon (Cyropoed), "none of the Persians had given adoration to Cyrus."
Are kings and ambassadors required to kiss the Pope's slipper? This, too, is copied from the same pattern; for, says Professor Gaussen, quoting Strabo and Herodotus, "the kings of Chaldea wore on their feet slippers which the kings they conquered used to kiss." In kind, is the Pope addressed by the title of "Your Holiness"? So also was the Pagan Pontiff of Rome. The title seems to have been common to all Pontiffs. Symmachus, the last Pagan representative of the Roman Emperor, as Sovereign Pontiff, addressing one of his colleagues or fellow-pontiffs, on a step of promotion he was about to obtain, says, "I hear that YOUR HOLINESS (sanctitatem tuam) is to be called out by the sacred letters."
Peter's keys have now been restored to their rightful owner. Peter's chair must also go along with them. That far-famed chair came from the very same quarter as the cross-keys. The very same reason that led the Pope to assume the Chaldean keys naturally led him also to take possession of the vacant chair of the Pagan Pontifex Maximus. As the Pontifex, by virtue of his office, had been the Hierophant, or Interpreter of the Mysteries, his chair of office was as well entitled to be called "Peter's" chair as the Pagan keys to be called "the keys of Peter"; and so it was called accordingly. The real pedigree of the far-famed chair of Peter will appear from the following fact: "The Romans had," says Bower, "as they thought, till the year 1662, a pregnant proof, not only of Peter's erecting their chair, but of his sitting in it himself; for, till that year, the very chair on which they believed, or would make others believe, he had sat, was shown and exposed to public adoration on the 18th of January, the festival of the said chair. But while it was cleaning, in order to set it up in some conspicuous place of the Vatican, the twelve labours of Hercules unluckily appeared on it!" and so it had to be laid aside. The partisans of the Papacy were not a little disconcerted by this discovery; but they tried to put the best face on the matter they could. "Our worship," said Giacomo Bartolini, in his Sacred Antiquities of Rome, while relating the circumstances of the discovery, "Our worship, however, was not misplaced, since it was not to the wood we paid it, but to the prince of the apostles, St. Peter," that had been supposed to sit in it. Whatever the reader may think of this apology for chair-worship, he will surely at least perceive, taking this in connection with what we have already seen, that the hoary fable of Peter's chair is fairly exploded.