In this relief the offerings depicted also are, I think, no less instructive than the bearded snake. If we may suppose that the somewhat indeterminate object, cake, egg, or fruit, was intended for a honey-cake, the offerings combine that which was the accustomed food of snake-_genii_ in ancient times with a cock, the victim most frequently sacrificed to the same _genii_ at the present day.
Of gods, Asclepius, perhaps because he began life as a hero, was most frequently represented in serpent-form. It was in this guise that he came to Sicyon, Epidaurus Limera, and Rome[725]; and in later times Lucian tells a humorous tale of how an impostor effected by trickery a supposed re-incarnation of Asclepius in snake-form before the very eyes of the people out of whose superstitions he made a living and indeed a fortune[726]. Here again, if we may argue from modern custom, the serpent-form carried with it the traditional offering of a ‘cock to Asclepius.’ But other gods too had sometimes their attendant snakes, as had Asclepius at Epidaurus; and in every case it is likely that the particular god had originally dispossessed a primitive snake-_genius_, but inherited from him and retained for a time in local cults the form of a snake; until, as the conception of the gods became more and more anthropomorphic, the snake ceased to be a manifestation of the god himself and became merely his minister or his symbol. Even Zeus himself, under the title of Meilichios, is proved by two reliefs found at the Piraeus to have been figured for a time by his worshippers as a snake[727].
In many such cases doubtless the substitution of the cult of a new and named god for that of a primitive and nameless _genius_ explains adequately the incomer’s inheritance and temporary retention of the snake-form; but in the case of tutelary heroes, above all, the analogy of modern folk-lore, in which the human victim is sometimes erroneously elevated to the rank of guardian-_genius_, supplies, I think, the right clue to the process by which in ancient times the snake came to be the recognised incarnation of the spirits of dead men and heroes.
The _genii_ of water, to whom we now turn, are sometimes imagined in the form of dragons or of bulls, but more often by far in human or quasi-human shape. An exception to the general rule must of course be made in the case of the _genii_ of bridges, if, as I suppose, they were originally identical with the _genii_ of those rivers which the bridges span; for these, as I have said, are usually dragons. But if in this case there is a difference in outward appearance, there is a general agreement at any rate in characteristics; for the _genii_ of water are no less hostile to man than those who demand human sacrifice as the price of their permission to build a bridge.