Line 107.—Hermodicos of Lampsacus comes to the Hieron in a paralyzed condition. As he sleeps in the abaton the god tells him to rise, to walk outside the precinct, and carry back into it the largest stone he can find. He does so, and brings in a stone so heavy that no other man can lift it, and the stone, as the inscription says, still lies before the abaton. The same stone (probably) lies there to-day, and the visitor may yet in vain emulate the feat of Hermodicos. It will be recognised in the illustration, Plate XXXI, by the hole cut in it to put the hands in. Line 113.—A man had his foot lacerated by the bite of a wild beast; he is in much pain; the servants of the abaton carry him outside during the daytime; as he is waiting to be healed a serpent follows him, licks his foot, and he is at once cured. Line 122.—Heraieus of Mytilene has no hair on his head; he asks the god to make it grow again. Asklepios applies an ointment, and next morning the hair has grown thickly over his scalp. (Unfortunately Asklepios omitted to write down the prescription for the benefit of those in like case in the future!) [Illustration: PLATE XXXI—The Stone miraculously carried by the paralyzed Hermodicos] At line 48 begins a story containing a moral which the priests may have thought it desirable to impress upon their visitors:— Pandaros comes all the way from Thessaly in order to have a disfiguring eruption or branding mark on his forehead cured; he is quickly made well. Returning to Thessaly his cure is observed by his neighbour Echedoros, who has a similar, but slighter, eruption on the face. He also goes to Hieron, carrying with him a sum of money sent to the god by the grateful Pandaros. Echedoros contemplates retaining this money himself; he consults the god about his own case, and in answer to a question states that he has brought no gift from Pandaros. On rising in the morning he finds that, instead of having his skin disease cured, that of Pandaros has been added to it. Line 96.—A man from Toronœa is so unfortunate as not to be in the good graces of his stepmother; she introduces a number of leeches into the wine he drinks. Being of a submissive and confiding temperament, he swallows the beverage unsuspectingly, but the results are so serious that he is obliged to visit the god. Asklepios cuts open his chest with a knife, removes the leeches, sews up the chest again, and the patient returns home next day. From other inscriptions we find that Asklepios treats dropsy surgically, in a simple but heroic manner; he first cuts off the patient’s head, then holds him up by the heels; the fluid all runs out. He then puts the patient’s head on again, and the case terminates happily. These, I think, are a sufficient sample of the preposterous stories of cures which the god was reported to have performed in early times.