Asclepiades, a celebrated physician, on his return from his country seat, met a large company conveying a corpse to the grave. A principle of curiosity induced him to ask the name of the deceased person, but grief and sorrow reigned so universally that no one returned him answer; upon which, approaching the corpse, he found the whole of it rubbed over with perfumes, and the mouth moistened with precious balm, according to the custom of the Greeks; then carefully feeling every part, and discovering latent signs of life, he forthwith affirmed that the person was not dead, and the person was saved.--_Celsus ii., 6, “De re Medica.”_ In the tenth book of Plato’s Republic is related the story of one Er, an Armenian, who was slain in battle. Ten days after, when the surviving soldiers came with a view to inter the dead, they found all the bodies corrupted except his; for which reason they conveyed him to his own house in order to inter him in the usual manner. But two days after, to the great surprise of all present, he returned to life when laid on the funeral pile. Quenstedt remarks upon this case, which he took from Kornmann’s treatise “De Miraculis Mortuorum,” “That the soul sometimes remains in the body when the senses are so fettered, and, as it were, locked up, that it is hard to determine whether a person is dead or alive.” Pliny in his “Natural History,” book vii., chap. 52, which treats of _those who have returned to life when they were about to be laid in the grave_, tells us that Acilius Aviola, a man of so considerable distinction that he had formerly been honoured with the consulship, returned to life when he was upon the funeral pile; but, as he could not be rescued from the violence of the flames, he was burnt alive. The like misfortune also happened to Lucius Lamia, who had been praetor. These two shocking accidents are also related by Valerius Maximus. Celius Tubero had a happier fate than his two fellow-citizens, since, according to Pliny, he discovered the signs of life before it was too late. His state, however, was far from eligible, since, being laid on the funeral pile, he stood a fair chance of being exposed to the like misfortune. Pliny, from the testimony of Varro, adds that when a distribution of land was making at Capua, a certain man, when carried a considerable way from his own house in order to be interred, returned home on foot. The like surprising accident also happened at Aquinum. The last instance of this nature related by the author occurred at Rome, and Pliny must, no doubt, have been intimately acquainted with all its most minute circumstances, since the person was one Cerfidius, the husband of his mother’s sister, who returned to life after an agreement had been made for his funeral with the undertaker, who was probably much disappointed when he found him alive and in good health.