In token of his humble birth as the ghost of a mortal the snake always clings to Asklepios, but it is not the only evidence. An essential part of his healing ritual was always and everywhere the ἐγκοίμησις[887], the ‘sleeping in’ his sanctuary. The patient who came to be cured must sleep and in a dream the god either healed him or revealed the means of healing. It was the dream oracle sent by Earth herself[888] that Apollo the Olympian came to supersede. All the strange web of human chicanery that was woven round the dream cure it would here be irrelevant to examine: only the simple fact need be noted that the prescribed ritual of sleep was merely a survival of the old dream oracle of the hero. It was nowise peculiar to Asklepios. When men came to the beautiful little sanctuary of Amphiaraos[889] at Oropus they purified themselves, sacrificed a ram, and spreading the skin under them they went to sleep ‘awaiting a revelation in a dream.’ The dream oracle remained always proper to the earth-born heroes; we hear of no one _sleeping_ in the precinct of Zeus, or of Apollo, and the belief in the magic of sleep long outlasted the service of the Olympians. To-day year by year on the festival of the Panagia a throng of sick from the islands round about make their pilgrimage to Tenos, and the sick sleep in the Church and in the precinct and are healed, and in the morning is published the long list of miraculous cures (θαύματα). It is only the truth and the true gods that lived. The Panagia has taken to herself all that was real in ancient faith, in her are still incarnate the Mother and the Maid and Asklepios the Saviour. Like most primitive faiths the belief in the dream cure appealed to something very deep-down and real, however misunderstood and perverted, something in the secret bidding of nature that said, that always will say: ‘Sleep Heart, a little free From thoughts that kill. Nothing now hard to thee Or good or ill. And when the shut eyes see Sleep’s mansions fill, Night might bring that to be Day never will.’ The worship of Asklepios, we know from the evidence of an inscription[890], was introduced at Athens about 421 B.C.: it was still no doubt something of a new excitement when Aristophanes wrote his _Plutus_. But Athens was not left till 421 B.C. without a Hero-Healer. Asklepios came to Athens as a full-blown god, came first from Thessaly, where he was the rival of Apollo, and finally from his great sanctuary at Epidauros, and, when he came, we have definite evidence that his cult was superimposed on that of a more ancient hero. ‘Affiliated’ is perhaps the juster word, for when a hero from without took over the cult of an indigenous hero there is no clash of ritual as in the case of an Olympian, no conflict between θυσίαι and ἐναγισμοί; both heroes alike are content with the simple offering of the _pelanos_. * * * * *