- metic, laws, music, and the cultivation of the olive.
According to Jamblicus, who wrote on the mysteries of Egypt in the reign of the Emperor Julian, the Egyptian priests then recognised forty-two books as the genuine works of Hermes. Six of these dealt respectively with anatomy, diseases in general, women's complaints, eye diseases, surgery, and the preparation of remedies. Jamblicus is not sure of their authenticity, and, as already stated, Galen uncompromisingly declares them to be apocryphal. Other writers are far less modest than Jamblicus in their estimates of the number of the writings of Hermes. Seleucus totals them at 20,000, and Manethon says 38,000.
The legend of Hermes apparently grew up among the Alexandrian writers of the first century. It was from them that his surname Trismegistus (thrice-great) originated. It was pretended that in the old Egyptian temples the works of Hermes were kept on papyri, and that the priests in treating diseases were bound to follow his directions implicitly. If they did, and the patient died, they were exonerated; but if they departed from the written instructions they were liable to be condemned to death, even though the patient recovered.
It is hardly necessary to say that in the preceding paragraph no attempt has been made to discuss modern researches on ancient beliefs. Greek scholars, for example, trace the Greek Hermes to an Indian source, and assume the existence of two gods of the same name.
Bacchus, Ammon, and Zoroaster.
Bacchus, King of Assyria, and subsequently a deity, was claimed by some of the Eastern nations as the
