10
“It seems to me,” said Deinomachus, “that when you talk like that you do not believe in the gods, either, since you do not think that cures can be effected through holy names.’ “Don’t say that, my dear sir!” I replied. “Even though the gods exist, there is nothing to prevent that sort of thing from being false just the same. For my part, I revere the gods and I see their cures and all the good that they do by restoring the sick to health with drugs and doctoring. In fact, Asclepius himself and his sons ministered to the sick by laying on healing drugs, not by fastening on lions’ skins and weasels.”Iliad4, 218; 11, 830.
11
“Never mind him,” said Ion, “and I will tell you a wonderful story. I was still a young lad, about fourteen years old, when someone came and told my father that Midas the vine-dresser, ordinarily a strong and industrious servant, had been bitten by a viper toward midday and was lying down, with his leg already in a state of mortification. While he was tying up the runners and twining them about the poles, the creature had crawled up and bitten him on the great toe; then it had quickly gone down again into its hole, and he was groaning in mortal anguish.
11
“As this report was being maile, we saw Midas himself being brought up on a litter by his fellowslaves, all swollen and livid, with a clammy skin and but little breath left in him. Naturally my father was distressed, but a friend who was there said to him: ‘Cheer up: I will at once go and get you a Babylonian, one of the so-called Chaldeans, who will cure the fellow.’ Not to make a long story of it, the Babylonian came and brought Midas back to life, driving the poison out of his body by a spell, and also binding upon his foot a fragment which he broke from the tombstone of a dead maiden.
11
“Perhaps this is nothing out of the common: although Midas himself picked up the litter on which he had been carried and went off to the farm, so potent was the spell and the fragment of the tombstone.
