In accordance with this allegorical meaning, the function of the
ace is most significant. It leads captive every other card,
queen and king included--thus indicating the omnipotence of gold
or mammon!
'To the mighty god of this nether world--
To the spirit that roams with banner unfurl'd
O'er the Earth and the rolling Sea--
And hath conquer'd all to his thraldom
Where his eye hath glanced or his footstep sped--
Who hath power alike o'er the living and dead--
Mammon![59] I sing to thee!
[59] Steinmetz Ode to Mammon.
Some say that the four kings represent those famous champions of
antiquity--David, Alexander, Julius Caesar, and Charlemagne; and
that the four queens, Argine, Pallas, Esther, and Judith, are the
respective symbols of majesty, wisdom, piety, and fortitude; and
there can be no doubt, if you look attentively on the queens of a
pack of cards, you will easily discern the appropriate
expressions of all these attributes in the faces of the grotesque
ladies therein depicted. The valets, or attendants, whom we call
knaves, are not necessarily 'rascals,' but simply servants royal;
at first they were knights, as appears from the names of some of
the famous French knights being formerly painted on the cards.
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