Sacred Tales III

​From the temple-warden, I learned that it was a compound of three ingredients: the sap with which we anointed ourselves, nard ointment, and another expensive ointment which is named, I believe, after the leaf. Having prepared it, I used it in this way for the remaining time, and all those symptoms were relaxed. Telesphorus also appeared at night, dancing around my neck, and a brilliance like that from the sun shone on the opposite wall. Around this time, the following also happened to me at the same time, whether I was already vomiting in the evening or the vomiting had not yet begun. The god required me to eat, upon rising from bed, walnuts, dried figs, dates, and along with these some bread. I used these from then on in addition to the remedy. For my stomach, hypochondria, and the region around them, the god gave a plaster remedy, earlier, I think, than these things. He gave it by presenting such a vision: I seemed to see the physician Asclepiacus enter my room, examine me, apply a plaster with a drug called dictamnus, and at the same time foretell that I should use it for thirty days. I used it, and when the thirtieth night indeed arrived, I seemed to see Asclepiacus come again and remove the plaster. Sometime later, having composed something from four ingredients, he applied it; two of these I remember, wine-pitch and sheep-grease, and the other two, if the dreams should appear, we shall fill in. Furthermore, concerning the name of the wild-beast remedy, I remember the following. I happened to be eating only once a day and leaving a large part of the day without food, but the god ordered me to dine and, upon rising, to drink of this remedy; and this went on for five consecutive days, though I knew the physicians ordered the opposite—that whenever one is about to drink a remedy, one should not dine, which had been my custom until then. Again, he ordered me to eat of this same remedy with bread, and I ate it by the sacred tripod, making this a sort of safeguard. There is another remedy, I think, a compound of Philon. Previously, I was not even able to smell this, but when the god signaled to use it and at the very hour I must do so, I not only drank it easily, but having drunk it, I was immediately more comfortable and relieved. There would be ten thousand other things to tell ​concerning remedies, some of which the god, compiling them himself, and others of the common and ordinary kinds, gave for the treatment of my body, as occurred on each occasion. When there was a continuous flow of catarrh and my palate was burning hot, and my uvula was swollen, and my veins did not cease being tense, I dreamed that I was reading some important book, whose detailed contents—for I shall say the same thing again—I would not be able to tell. For how could I so long afterward, especially when the recording of it has taken away the effort of keeping it in memory? But toward the end of the book, there was especially something of this kind, spoken as if concerning one of the athletic competitors. Having considered all these things and seeing the flow of mucus rushing headlong, the god ordered him to drink water and abstain from wine, if he needed to win; “which things indeed,” he said, “it is possible for you also, by imitating him, to be crowned or crowned together.” Here the book ended. Then there was written below, as the title of the work, “Lover of the Crown” or “Lover of Winning the Crown.” How long a time I endured this water-drinking, I cannot say; but that I did so easily and readily, though previously always disliking water and feeling nauseous. When this service also had been performed, the god released me from the water and prescribed a measure of wine, and the phrase was indeed “a royal hemina”; it is clear, of course, that he meant a half-kotyle. I used this, and it was so sufficient that previously double the amount was not enough, and sometimes it even remained over when I spared it through fear that it might fail. I did not indeed make this a special reserve for the next day, but from the beginning I had to be content with the measure. When this trial also was over, he allowed me now to drink at will, joking in some such way, that those of men are foolish who, having an abundance of sufficient things, do not dare to use them freely. And this very book seemed to be that of Antisthenes *On Use*; it related to wine, and some symbols of Dionysus were on it. In any case, I was so disposed by habit that...