Homer, Hymn ad Æsculap. 2. The tale briefly alluded to in the Homeric Hymn. ad Apollin. 209. is evidently different: Ischys is there the companion of Apollo, and Korônis is an Arcadian damsel. Aristidês, the fervent worshipper of Asklêpius, adopted the story of Korônis, and composed hymns on the γάμον Κορωνίδος καὶ γένεσιν τοῦ θεοῦ (Orat. 23. p. 463, Dind.). [422] See Pindar, Pyth. iii. The Scholiast puts a construction upon Pindar’s words which is at any rate far-fetched, if indeed it be at all admissible: he supposes that Apollo knew the fact from his own omniscience, without any informant, and he praises Pindar for having thus transformed the old fable. But the words οὐδ᾽ ἔλαθε σκόπον seem certainly to imply some informant: to suppose that σκόπον means the god’s own mind, is a strained interpretation. Machaôn and Podaleirius, the two sons of Asklêpius, command the contingent from Trikka, in the north-west region of Thessaly, at the siege of Troy by Agamemnôn.[423] They are the leeches of the Grecian army, highly prized and consulted by all the wounded chiefs. Their medical renown was further prolonged in the subsequent poem of Arktinus, the Iliu-Persis, wherein the one was represented as unrivalled in surgical operations, the other as sagacious in detecting and appreciating morbid symptoms. It was Podaleirius who first noticed the glaring eyes and disturbed deportment which preceded the suicide of Ajax.[424] [423] Iliad, ii. 730. The Messênians laid claim to the sons of Asklêpius as their heroes, and tried to justify the pretension by a forced construction of Homer (Pausan. iii. 4, 2). [424] Arktinus, Epicc. Græc. Fragm. 2. p. 22, Düntzer. The Ilias Minor mentioned the death of Machaôn by Eurypylus, son of Têlephus (Fragm. 5. p. 19, Düntzer).