was the son of Arsinoe and a citizen at Messene, Apollo answered from his oracle, “O Æsculapius, that art born a great joy to all mortals, whom lovely Coronis, the daughter of Phlegyas, bare to me the child of love, at rocky Epidaurus.” This oracular response shows plainly that Æsculapius was not the son of Arsinoe, but that Hesiod, or somebody that interpolated Hesiod, inserted that legend to please the people of Messene. And this too bears me out that Æsculapius was born at Epidaurus, that his worship is derived from thence. For the Athenians call the day on which they worship Æsculapius _Epidauria_, and they say the god is worshipped by them from Epidaurus; and also Archias the son of Aristæchmus, being healed in Epidauria of a convulsion that seized him when he was hunting near Pindasus, introduced the worship of the god at Pergamum. And from the people of Pergamum it passed in our time to the people of Smyrna. And at Balagræ amongst the Cyrenæans the Epidaurian Æsculapius is called _Doctor_. And from the Cyrenæans Æsculapius got worshipped in Labene among the Cretans. And there is this difference between the Cyrenæan and Epidaurian customs of worshipping Æsculapius, that the former sacrifice goats, which is not customary with the latter. And I find that Æsculapius was considered as a god from the beginning, and not merely as he got fame as time went on, from other proofs, and the testimony of Homer in what Agamemnon says about Machaon, “Talthybius, call here as quickly as possible Machaon the mortal, the son of Æsculapius,” as if he said the man the son of the god.[28] CHAPTER XXVII.