Page:Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (Seyffert, 1901).pdf/87

Rh names of its parts are: deunx $11⁄12$, dextans $5⁄6$, dodrans $3⁄4$, bes $2⁄3$, septunx $7⁄12$, semis $1⁄2$, quincunx $5⁄12$, triens $1⁄3$, quadrans $1⁄4$, sextans $1⁄6$, sescuncia $1⁄8$, uncia $1⁄12$. In questions of inheritance, a sole heir was entitled hērēs ex asse, an heir to half the estate, heres ex semisse, and so on. As a coin, the copper as weighed a Roman pound (nominally 12, but practically only 10 unciæ), and was worth, previously to 269, nearly 6d. In the year 217 it was reduced to 1 uncia, and in later times to $1⁄2$ and $1⁄4$ uncia. In Cicero's time the as was = rather less than a halfpenny. Comp..

 Ascănĭus. The son of Æneas and Crëūsa. According to the ordinary account, he accompanied his father to Italy, and, thirty years after the building of Lavīnium, founded Alba Longa, where, after his death, his stepbrother Silvius reigned. To him, by his name of Iūlus, the gens Iūlia traced its origin.

 Asclēpĭădēs. A Greek poet, a native of Samos, and a younger contemporary of Theocrītus. He was the author of thirty-nine Epigrams, mostly erotic, in the Greek Anthology. The well-known Asclepiadean Metre was perhaps named after him.

 Asclēpĭŏdŏtus. A Greek writer, pupil of the Stoic Pŏsīdōnius of Rhodes (who died 51). On the basis of his lectures Asclepiodotus seems to have written the military treatise preserved under his name on the Macedonian military system.

 Asclēpĭus (Lat. Æscŭlāpĭus). The Greek god of Medicine, according to the common account a son of the healing god Apollo by Cŏrōnis, daughter of a Thessalian prince Phlĕgy̌as. Coronis was killed by Artĕmis for unfaithfulness, and her body was about to be burnt on the pyre, when Apollo snatched the boy out of the flames, and handed him over to the wise centaur Chīrōn, who instructed him in the cure of all diseases. According to the local legend of Epidaurus, Coronis, having accompanied her father on a campaign to the Peloponnesus, is secretly delivered of the child, and exposes it on a mountain near that town, where it is nourished by a herd of goats. Such was the skill of Asclepius that he brought even dead men to life; so that Zeus, either for fear of his setting men altogether free from death, or at the complaint of Hādēs, killed him with his thunderbolt. Apollo in revenge slew all the Cyclōpĕs who forged the thunderbolts, as a punishment for which he had to serve Admētus for a time. In Homer and Pindar, Asclepius is still but a hero, a cunning leech, and father of two heroes fighting before Troy, Măchāōn and Pŏdăleirius. But he was afterwards universally worshipped as the god of healing, in groves, beside medicinal springs, and on mountains. The seats of his worship served also as places of cure, where patients left thank-offerings and votive tablets describing their complaint and the manner of its cure. Often the cure was effected by the dreams of the patients, who were required to sleep in the sacred building, in which there sometimes stood, as might be expected, a statue of Sleep or Dreaming.

His worship extended all over Greece with its islands and colonies; his temples were especially numerous in the Peloponnēsus, the most famous being that of Epidaurus, where a great festival with processions and combats was held in his honour every five years. Next in estimation stood the temple