Soon the Temple servitor Put out the lights and bade us fall asleep, Nor stir, nor speak, whatever noise we heard. So down we lay in orderly repose. And I could catch no slumber, not one wink, Struck by a nice tureen of broth which stood A little distance from an old wife's head, Whereto I marvellously longed to creep. Then, glancing upwards, I beheld the priest Whipping the cheese-cakes and figs from off The holy table; thence he coasted round To every altar spying what was left. And everything he found he consecrated Into a sort of sack--(16) a procedure which reminds one of the story of "Bel and the Dragon." Then the god came, in the person of the priest, and scanned each patient. He did not neglect physical measures, as he brayed in a mortar cloves, Tenian garlic, verjuice, squills and Sphettian vinegar, with which he made application to the eyes of the patient. (16) Aristophanes: B. B. Roger's translation, London, Bell & Sons, 1907, Vol. VI, ll. 668, etc., 732 ff. Then the God clucked, And out there issued from the holy shrine Two great, enormous serpents.... And underneath the scarlet cloth they crept, And licked his eyelids, as it seemed to me; And, mistress dear, before you could have drunk Of wine ten goblets, Wealth arose and saw.(17) (17) Ibid. The incubation sleep, in which indications of cure were divinely sent, formed an important part of the ritual. The Asklepieion, or Health Temple of Cos, recently excavated, is of special interest, as being at the birthplace of Hippocrates, who was himself an Asklepiad. It is known that Cos was a great medical school. The investigations of Professor Rudolf Hertzog have shown that this temple was very nearly the counterpart of the temple at Epidaurus.