Page:An Essay on the Age and Antiquity of the Book of Nabathaean Agriculture.djvu/57

Rh founder of a religion and benefactor of mankind, is (Æsculapius), or rather. The part which is assigned to Asclepius in the apocryphal Hermesian legends is well known. Ibn-Abi-Oceibia takes a singular mythology of Æsculapius from a Syriac work; in another place he connects him expressly with Babylon. It is strange that Dr. Chwolson attaches any importance to such chimeras. He even supposes that his Askolábita must be considered as the prototype of the Asklepios of the Greeks. In the same ephemeral spirit he asks in another place whether Asklepios and Hermes were not, in reality, ancient sages deified after their death.