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In these times Apis king of Argos crossed over into Egypt in ships,
and, on dying there, was made Serapis, the chief god of all the
Egyptians. Now Varro gives this very ready reason why, after his
death, he was called, not Apis, but Serapis. The ark in which he
was placed when dead, which every one now calls a sarcophagus, was
then called in Greek soros, and they began to worship him when buried
in it before his temple was built; and from Soros and Apis he was
called first [Sorosapis, or] Sorapis, and then Serapis, by
changing a letter, as easily happens. It was decreed regarding him
also, that whoever should say he had been a man should be capitally
punished. And since in every temple where Isis and Serapis were
worshipped there was also an image which, with finger pressed on the
lips, seemed to warn men to keep silence, Varro thinks this signifies
that it should be kept secret that they had been human. But that bull
which, with wonderful folly, deluded Egypt nourished with abundant
delicacies in honor of him, was not called Serapis, but Apis,
because they worshipped him alive without a sarcophagus. On the death
of that bull, when they sought and found a calf of the same color,
that is, similarly marked with certain white spots, they believed it
was something miraculous, and divinely provided for them. Yet it was
no great thing for the demons, in order to deceive them, to show to a
cow when she was conceiving and pregnant the image of such a bull,
which she alone could see, and by it attract the breeding passion of
the mother, so that it might appear in a bodily shape in her young,
just as Jacob so managed with the spotted rods that the sheep and goats
were born spotted. For what men can do with real colors and
substances, the demons can very easily do by showing unreal forms to
breeding animals.
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