The ESMUN “the Eighth” of the Phœnicians, especially worshipped at Berytus,[287] has been regarded[288] as essentially the same as the Grecian Æsculapius. He was probably that and something more. Little definite is known of this personage, of whom the serpent was a symbol, save what we are told of him in the fragment of an historical work by Sanchoniathon, preserved by Eusebius, an early Christian writer. “To Sydyk, called the Just,” it is said, “one of the Titanides[289] bore Esmun.”[290] He is represented to have been the eighth and chief of those spared by the deluge, and also of the Cabiri, or Cabeiri,[291] “the seven sons of Sydyk,”[292] the mighty ones, named, it has been said,[293] after mountains in Phrygia, and divinities widely, but in general secretly, adored, in Phœnicia, Carthage,[294] Egypt,[295] and elsewhere. The belief has been expressed that Noah and his family and the Cabiri were originally the same.[296] Mr. Faber entertained this view, and it is fully set forth by him in an interesting work,—one, by the way, in which is ably presented the so-called Arkite symbolism,[297] which has excited considerable attention, but which Mr. Tylor, as well as many others, declares to be “arrant nonsense.”[298] In reference to Æsculapius he says: “This deity connects the first and second tables of the Phœnician genealogies, his father, Sydyk, occupying a conspicuous place in the one, while his mother, Titanis, is enumerated among the daughters of Cronus, in the other. I am much inclined to think that the imaginary god of health is in reality the very same person as his reputed father, Sydyk, both of them being equally the patriarch, Noah, worshipped in connection with the sun. Macrobius, accordingly, informs us that Æsculapius was one of the many names of the solar deity, and that he was usually adored along with Salus, or the Moon.[299] Salus, however, was no less a personification of the ark than of the moon, those two objects of idolatrous veneration being allied to each other in consequence of the union of the Arkite and Sabian superstitions. Thus, while Noah was revered as the god of health and as one of the eight Cabiri, the vessel in which he was preserved was honored with the title of Salus, or Safety.”[300] Lenormant regards the Cabiri as the seven planets of the ancients; that is, the Sun, Moon, Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, Venus, and Mercury. “Esmun,” says he, “invisible to mortal eyes, was supposed to be the connecting link of the seven others and the one approaching nearest to the primordial Baal.[301] He presided over the whole sideral system, and was supposed to preside over the laws and harmonies of the universe, and in this respect was the same as Taaut.”[302]