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While returning to his country house Asclepiades, a physician denominated the "God of Physic," and said to have been a descendant of aesculapius, saw during the time of Pompey the Great a crowd of mourners about to start a fire on a funeral pile.
Then by the procession of Iacchus we learn that divine aid has come to the despairing Demeter; by the coming of, Aesculapius shall all her wounds be healed; and the change in the evening from the mystæ to epoptæ is because that now to Demeter, the cycle of her grief being accomplished, the ways of Jove are made plain, even his permission of violence from unseen hands; to her also is the final libation.
Socrates emancipated himself from these degrading superstitions, and had a loftier idea of God than the people, or he would not have been accused of impiety, that is, a dissent from the popular belief; although there is one thing which I cannot understand in his life, and cannot harmonize with his general teachings, that in his last hours his last act was to command the sacrifice of a cock to Aesculapius.
Among the rest the infant Aesculapius was intrusted to his charge by Apollo, his father. Pluto resented this, and Jupiter, at his request, struck the bold physician with lightning, and killed him, but after his death received him into the number of the gods. Chiron was the wisest and justest of all the Centaurs, and at his death Jupiter placed him among the stars as the constellation Sagittarius.
Carthage, as well as Rome, had her Capitol and Palatine upon Mount Byrsa, where rose no doubt a temple consecrated to the Capitolean triune deities, Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, not far from the great temple of AEsculapius, a modern transformation of the old Punic Eschmoum. Hard by these sanctuaries, the Proconsul's palace dominated Carthage from the height of the acclivity of the Acropolis.
They were the dwellings of two young men who were cunning in the law; an equal number of that class who chaffered to the wants of the community under the title of storekeepers; and a disciple of Aesculapius, who, for a novelty, brought more subjects into the world than he sent out of it.
The doctor, putting an enormous pair of spectacles upon his nose, took up a piece of paper and pretended to read slowly and carefully to avoid stammering: "'Dr. Aesculapius. "'Dear Sir: I was wounded in the Mexican war. I have been unable to walk without crutches for many years; but after using your liniment, I ran for office! Think of it, gentlemen, the day of miracles has not passed.
Fagon, the boldest and most audacious of all who ever exercised the art of AEsculapius, decided that, to lessen the running, it was necessary to draw the blood to another quarter. In spite of the opinion of his colleagues, he ordered her to be bled, and all her blood rushed to her heart.
The other, his antithesis, was a short, rosy-cheeked, apoplectic-looking subject, with a laugh like a suffocating wheeze, and a paunch like an alderman; his quick, restless eye, and full nether lip denoting more of the bon vivant than the abstemious disciple of Aesculapius.
"Gad-a-mercy!" said Benjamin Wright, fretfully, opening his eye and looking at him "that makes us square! Don't you see?" There was a long silence. Once Dr. Lavendar spoke to him, and once William King touched his wrist, but he seemed to sleep. Then abruptly, and quite clearly, he spoke: "'Crito, I owe a cock to Aesculapius'.... Lavendar?" "Yes, Benjamin?" "The debt is paid. Hey?
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