t such a theme
suited my powers and would be a welcome offering to the god, I begin
at the outset of my book by making one of my fellow students of Athens
demand of Persius in Greek what was the subject of the declamation
delivered by myself on the previous day in the temple of Aesculapius.
As the dialogue proceeds I introduce Severus to their company. His
part is written in the language of Rome. For Persius, although a
master of Latin, shall yet to-day speak to you in the Attic tongue.

_A story of the physician Asclepiades._

19. The famous Asclepiades, who ranks among the greatest of doctors,
indeed, if you except Hippocrates, as the very greatest, was the first
to discover the use of wine as a remedy. It requires, however, to be
administered at the proper moment, and it was in the discovery of the
right moment that he showed especial skill, noting most carefully the
slightest symptom of disorder or undue rapidity of the pulse. It
chanced that once, when he was returning to town from his country
house, he observed an enormous funeral procession in the suburbs of
the city. A huge multitude of men who had come out to perform the last
honours stood round about the bier, all of them plunged in deep sorrow
and wearing worn and ragged apparel. He asked whom they were burying,
but no one replied; so he went nearer[62] to satisfy his curiosity and
to see who it might be that was dead, or, it may be, in the hope to
make some discovery in the interests of his profession. Be this as it
may, he certainly snatched the man from the jaws of death as he lay
there on the verge of burial. The poor fellow's limbs were already
covered with spices, his mouth filled with sweet-smelling unguent. He
had been anointed and was all ready for the pyre. But Asclepiades
looked upon him, took careful note of certain signs, handled his body
again and again and perceived that the life was still in him, though
scarcely to be detected. Straightway he cried out 'He lives! Throw
down your torches, take away your fire demolish the pyre, take back
the funeral feast and spread it on his board at home'. While he spoke
a murmur arose; some said that they must take the doctor's word,
others mocked at the physician's skill. At last, in spite of the
opposition offered even by his relations, perhaps because they had
already entered into possession of the dead man's property, perhaps
because they did not yet believe his words, Asclepiades persuaded them
to pu