ISLAND OP COS. 447 
pictures representing hair-breadth escapes, a chap. 
dehverance from banditti, or a recovery from ' j 
received advice concerning the remedies they should use to procure 
their health. ' Julian (says an old inscriptiou) vomited blood ; and 
* was g;iven over : the God told him to come and take the cones of a 
pine-tree, and eat them, with honey, for three days. He received 
* his health, and came and returned thanks in the presence of the 
* people,' 
Valerius Aper, a soldier, was blind. The God told him to take 
the blood of a white cock ; to mix it with honey, and make an oint- 
ment of it ; and apply it to his eyes for three days. He gained his 
sight, and came and returned thanks.' 
" On these, and similar occasions, we must suppose the votive 
offerings were presented; many of which are found in Greece and 
Asia*. They were fixed, as we have observed, sometimes in the rock, 
near the sacred precincts of a temple; sometimes appended to the 
walls and columns of the temples : they were fastened also, by wax, to 
the knees, or other parts of the statues of the Gods f . 
" When we sa}', that the offerings were made in the temple of liis, 
we must understand, that the honour was paid particularly to Serapi.'i, 
joint-tenant of the temple, as the God of Medicine. 'Ego Medicind 
a Serapi utor,' says fai-i'ol. See also Cicero, in his second book, 
De Divinat. Nor did those only who recovered from illness pay their 
votive tribute of gratitude to the Gods ; their friends often united with 
them in this act of dev(>tion. 
" The period of the first introduction into the Christian church of 
this custom, once so prevalent in Pagan Italy and Greece, cannot be 
precisely fixed. But Theodoret, one of the Greek Fathers, has a pas- 
sage in his Therapeutics^, which attests the existence of the practice, 
in the fifth century, of Christians offering, in their Churches, 
representations 
. * Tlie medicine itself was sometimes placed in tlie temples ; as in the case of a 
■goldsmith, who, on his death-bed, bequeathed an ointment to a temple, which those 
who were unable to see the physicians might use.— ^fius, Tetr. xi. Serin. 4. 
t Juven, Sat. x. 54. .Pradott. contra Symm. lib, i. Lucian. Philop. 
t Tarn. Adv. lib. in. c. s. ." An .^sculapius, an Scrapis, potest praescribcie per 
somnium ciiralionem valcludinis." Cicero dc Divin.. 
t Lib. viii. 
