[430] Strabo, viii. p. 374; Aristophan. Vesp. 122; Plutus, 635-750; where the visit to the temple of Æsculapius is described in great detail, though with a broad farcical coloring.
During the last illness of Alexander the Great, several of his principal officers slept in the temple of Serapis, in the hope that remedies would be suggested to them in their dreams (Arrian, vii. 26).
Pausanias, in describing the various temples of Asklêpius which he saw, announces as a fact quite notorious and well-understood, “Here cures are wrought by the god” (ii. 36, 1; iii. 26, 7; vii. 27, 4): see Suidas, v. Ἀρίσταρχος. The Orations of Aristidês, especially the 6th and 7th, Asklêpius and the Asklêpiadæ, are the most striking manifestations of faith and thanksgiving towards Æsculapius, as well as attestations of his extensive working throughout the Grecian world; also Orat. 23 and 25, Ἱερῶν Λόγος, 1 and 3; and Or. 45 (De Rhetoricâ, p. 22. Dind.), αἵ τ᾽ ἐν Ἀσκληπιοῦ τῶν ἀεὶ διατριβόντων ἀγελαὶ, etc.
[431] Pausan. ii. 27, 3; 36, 1. Ταύταις ἐγγεγραμμένα ἐστὶ καὶ ἀνδρῶν καὶ γυναικῶν ὀνόματα ἀκεσθέντων ὑπὸ τοῦ Ἀσκληπιοῦ, πρόσετι δὲ καὶ νόσημα, ὅ,τι ἕκαστος ἐνόσησε, καὶ ὅπως ἰάθη,—the cures are wrought by the god himself.
[432] “Apollodôrus ætatem Herculis pro cardine chronologiæ habuit” (Heyne, ad Apollodôr. Fragm. p. 410).
[433] Herodot. v. 81.
[434] Nem. iv. 22. Isthm. vii. 16.
[435] This tale, respecting the transformation of the ants into men, is as old as the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women. See Düntzer, Fragm. Epicc. 21. p. 34; evidently an etymological tale from the name Myrmidones. Pausanias throws aside both the etymology and the details of the miracle: he says that Zeus raised men from the earth, at the prayer of Æakus (ii. 29, 2): other authors retained the etymology of Myrmidons from μύρμηκες, but gave a different explanation (Kallimachus, Fragm. 114, Düntzer). Μυρμιδόνων ἐσσῆνα (Strabo, viii. p. 375). Ἐσσὴν, ὁ οἰκιστής (Hygin. fab. 52).
According to the Thessalian legend, Myrmidôn was the son of Zeus by Eurymedusa, daughter of Kletor; Zeus having assumed the disguise of an ant (Clemens Alex. Admon. ad Gent. p. 25. Sylb.).
[436] Apollod. iii. 12, 6. Isokrat. Evagor. Encom. vol. ii. p. 278, Auger. Pausan. i. 45, 13; ii. 29, 6. Schol. Aristoph. Equit. 1253.